For England :: :: University of Virginia Library

Unskilled in Letters, and in Arts unversed;
Ignorant of empire; bounded in their view
By the lone billowing veldt, where they upgrew
Amid great silences; a people nursed
Apart—the far-sown seed of them that erst
Not Alva's sword could tame: now, blindly hurled
Against the march of the majestic world,
They fight and die, with dauntless bosoms curst.

Crazed, if you will; demented, not to yield
Ere all be lost! And yet it seems to me
They fought as noblest Englishmen did use
To fight, for freedom; and no Briton he,
Who to such valour in a desperate field
A knightly salutation can refuse.

[II]
PAST AND PRESENT

When lofty Spain came towering up the seas
This little stubborn land to daunt and quell,
The winds of heaven were our auxiliaries,
And smote her, that she fell.

Ah, not to-day is Nature on our side!
The mountains and the rivers are our foe.
And Nature with the heart of man allied
Is hard to overthrow.

V
“LENIENCY”

What voice is this, of bale and wrath?
“We have not burned enough, or slain;
Too little havoc marks our path;
We are too gentle, too humane.

“From countless roof-trees be there rolled
The smoke of expiatory fires!
More incense yet an hundredfold
The unsated God of War requires.”

Blind from the first, blind to the end,
Blind to all signs that ask men's gaze!
In vain by lips of foe or friend
The world cries shame upon your ways.

Blind beyond cure! Despoil and burn;
Fling forth the helpless—babes as well;
And let the children's children learn
To hate us with the hate of hell.

From whatsoever taint remain
Of lingering justice in our heart,
Purge us: erase the poor last stain
Of pity; yea, act out your part;

Speed us along the downward track;
Delay the dawn, defeat the light;
And thrust the human spirit back
Into the night, into the night.

V
FORCE AND FREEDOM

Oh, doubtless ye can trample and enchain,
Sow death and breathe out winter; but can ye
Persuade the destined bondsman he is free,
Or with a signal build the summer again?
Oh, ye can hold the rivulets of the plain
A little while from nuptials with the sea,
But the fierce mountain-stream of Liberty
Not edicts and not hosts may long restrain.
For this is of the heights and of the deeps,

Born of the heights and in the deeps conceived.
This, 'mid the lofty places of the mind,
Gushes pellucid, vehemently upheaved;
And tears and heart's blood hallow it, as it sweeps
Invincibly on, co-during with mankind.

VII
LAMENTATION

O early fall'n, uncrowned with envied laurel,
O lives that nameless come and noteless go,
Our vainly brave in an ignoble quarrel,
That fought unhating an unhating foe!

Ye pass, ye cease; in alien dust your dust is;
Carnage and tears depart not, wrath remains;

And Power derides the lips that counsel justice,
And nations wonder, and the world arraigns.

And foresight of how long the end yet tarries
To no man born of woman hath He given,
Who marshals all His flashing legionaries
Nightly upon the silent field of heaven.

IX
ACHIEVEMENT

Who says we fail? We prosper beyond dreams.
As architects of ruin we have no peers.
We thought to fire but farmsteads: we have lit
A flame less transient in the hearts of men.
We are ill at building? Yet have we at least
Destroyed to better purpose than we knew.
We have raised up heroes where we found but hinds,

We have ravaged well, our rapine is not vain.
Redder from our red hoof-prints the wild rose
Of freedom shall afresh hereafter spring,
And in our own despite are we the sires
Of liberty, as night begets the day.
Sufficient claim to memory this I deem,
Title enow, were other passport none.

XI
THE INEXORABLE LAW

We too shall pass, we too shall disappear,
Ev'n as the mighty nations that have waned
And perished. Not more surely are ordained
The crescence and the cadence of the year,
High-hearted June, October spent and sere,
Than this gray consummation. We have reigned
Augustly; let our part be so sustained
That Time, far hence, shall hold our memory dear!

Let it be said: “This Mistress of the sword
And conquering prow, this Empire swoln with spoils,
Yet served the human cause, yet strove for Man;
Hers was the purest greatness we record;
We whose ingathered sheaves her tilth foreran,
Whose peace comes of her tempests and her toils.”

XIII
THE UNSUBDUED

Our tears, our wounds, our sacrifices! Yea,
But what of theirs, whose monstrous agony towers,
Darkening the noon? Their woe outmatches ours
As Alps the Wrekin. No soft hands allay
Their giant pain. A whole world's wonder, they
Fight their lorn fight against invincible powers.

From earth's rough breast their tragic valour flowers,
Fostered in tempest through the thunderous day.
Calamity makes them great. Have we alone
No eyes, when all men witness and acclaim?
The sound of their rude warriorship is blown
From land to land. Earth shouts afar their fame.
Bruised, broken in shards, this people nought can tame;
They have a heart that cannot be o'erthrown.

XIV
GREETING

(Lines read at a meeting of Englishwomen)

I greet you and am with you, Friends of Peace,
Of Equity, of Freedom. 'Tis an hour
Inhospitable to Reason's tempering word;
Yet, being brave, being women, you will speak
The thought that must be spoken, without fear.
The Voice of Chivalry grows faint; the note
Of Patriotism is well-nigh overborne.

For what is Patriotism but noble care
For our own country's honour in mens' eyes,
And zeal for the just glory of her arms?
If it be aught but this we'll none of it.
Keep then that zeal, that noble care alive;
Keep then from altogether perishing
The light of the authentic patriot flame:
Even as another remnant kept it clear,
When in an England errant from herself
A dull King and his purblind counsellors
Goaded the New World to fling off the Old.
And in this hour when England half forgets
That Empire dies not starved but surfeited,
Warn her that tho' she 'whelm a kindred race,

A valiant people, stubborn-built as we,
Yet shall they gnarr hereafter at her heel,
Secretly unsubdued though beaten down;
Too near ourselves to be in spirit o'ercome
But on fierce memories fed, and evermore
Upborne in heart by the saluting world.

XV
A LAODICEAN

Timorous, hesitant voice, how utterly vile
I hold you!
Voice without wrath, without ruth—
empty of hate as of love!
Different notes from these, O watchman,
blow to the midnight!
Loud, in a deep-lulled land, trumpeter,
sound an alarm!

XVI
FOR ENGLAND

Of all great deaths on English ground, thine most,
Simon de Montfort, doth my spirit stir.
Thou fought'st for England and didst die for her,
Thyself of other race, from outland coast.
Law's mandatory and Freedom's, thou thy host
Didst hurl against a sceptred law-breaker;
Nor didst thou blench when, black from plume to spur,

Rode Fate on Evesham field, and all was lost.
Then for their lives thou bad'st thy noblest fly:
“Thou dying we would not live,” they made reply,
And dauntless round thy dauntlessness were mown;
And thou with wrath that hewed its way on high
Fell'st fighting the steep fight of Liberty,
In a crashing forest of the foe, alone.

XVII
METAMORPHOSIS

The golden voices of the nobler day,
Uttering the Statesman's or the Sage's thought,
Or from the Muse's mountain fastness blown;
Great voices of great lovers of their land;
All have departed, all return no more.

What of their mighty Mistress, her whom these
Gloried to serve? Behold, she staggers forth,

Paving her path with babes and sucklings slain;
Shouting her own applause, if haply so
She may shout down the hisses of the world;
Warned vainly, and rebuked by all her Past;
England, our ancient England, strange and new!

O loveliness transformed, what Comuswand
Hath touched thee? What enchantment hath prevailed,
That thou so deep descendest from so high,

Fall'n to this Ogre's work, more meet for them
That painted crimson the Anatolian snows?
At least one singer, honouring evermore
Thine inmost soul through all its outward change,
Shall not, in life's last passion of farewell,
When the dark wings close over him, bear hence
The dreadful memory, that he once blasphemed,
With benison on cruelty bestowed,
The holy spirit of song; or stood at gaze,
Unto these deaths consenting, foully mute.

XVIII
HARVEST

A naked people in captivity;
A land where Desolation hath her throne;
The wrath that is, the rage that is to be:
Our fruits, whereby we are known.

XX
THE TRAGIC CHANGE

To follow Truth was yesterday
To England's heart the surest way.
Follow her now, and thou shalt share
An exile's fate, an exile's fare.

XXI
LINES TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JAMES BRYCE, M.P.

IN ANSWER TO A LETTER

Thanks for your heartening word, that came from one
Acquainted with the story of many peoples,
Acquainted with the life of many peoples;
An honoured labourer for the amity
And weal of peoples, loftier things than sway.

Thanks for your heartening word, that came to one
Fated to hoist a somewhat lonely sail,
Against the wind and tide; that came to one
Fated to be at variance with the time,
Touching the parts it hisses or applauds;
Who liefer would sit mute, and be withdrawn
Far into some consolatory Past,
Among old voices, the unperishing,
Save that such words of cheer the courier Hours
Bring when most needed, words restorative,
Coming across the silence or dispraise,
Coming across the welter and the gloom.

I lose not hope or faith in this great land,
This many-victoried, many-heroed land,
Though hope oft sinks, and faith is hard to hold.
She that with ruthless John and truthless Charles,
And James the despicable, by voice or sword
Strove, and not vainly, for her liberties;
She that from him, the humbler of the world,
Whose thunderous heel was on submitted thrones,
Kept whole and virginal her liberties;
She that so joyed at sound of other lands
Heaved high with passion for their liberties;

Shall yet win back—'tis thus at least I dream,
Being her lover, and dreaming from the heart—
Shall yet win back her lost and wandering soul,
Shall yet recall herself from banishment;
Shall yet remember—she forgets to-day—
How the munificent hands of Life are full
Of gifts more covetable an hundredfold
Than man's dominion o'er reluctant man;
And come upon old wealth disused and idle,
Her scorned estate and slighted patrimony,
Auriferous veins in all the field of being,

With those shy treasures no self-seeking wins,
Rather self-search, and grace of fortunate hours.

The Cæsars and the Alexanders pass,
Whilst he that drank the hemlock, he that drank
The Cup more dread, on Calvary hill, remain,
Servants and mighty conquerors of the world.
The great achievement of the human mind
Is the idea of Justice. More than arts
And sciences, than faiths and rituals, this
Lifts all our life above the life of beasts.

Chiefly by this are we a nobler kind,
The Earth's elect and separate; lost to this,
Our state is as the state of beasts indeed,
That snatch their meat, one from another's mouth,
And without pain another's pain behold;
Though these are guiltless, knowing not light or law.

XXIII
THE DRAGONS

Prince Vortigern—so run the ancient tales—
A stronghold sought to build in wildest Wales;
But some fell Power frustrated each assay,
And nightly wrecked the labours of the day;
Till Merlin came, and bade the builders all,
Beneath the escarp'd and many-bastioned wall,
Dig deep; and lo, two dragons, o'er whose lair
Nothing secure might rise, lay sleeping there.

Search the foundations, you that build a State;
For if the dragon forms of Wrath and Hate
Lie coiled below, and darkly bide their hour,
Fear walks the rampart, Fear ascends the tower.
And let it not content you that they sleep:
Drive them with strong enchantments to the deep.
First of such charms is Perfect Justice; then
Comes the heart's word that conquers beasts and men.
No other craft shall serve—no spells but these
Drive the old dragons to the whelming seas.

XXIV
ALPHA AND OMEGA

He throned her in the gateways of the world,
He 'stablished her on high before the peoples.

He raised her as a watch-tower from the wave,
He built her as a lighthouse on the waters.

He maketh and unmaketh without end,
And He alone, who is first and last, shall judge her.