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 | Jubilee greeting at Spithead to the men of Greater Britain By Theodore Watts-Dunton |  |
TO OUR GREAT CONTEMPORARY WRITER OF PATRIOTIC POETRY, ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
1
[JUBILEE GREETING TO THE MEN OF GREATER BRITAIN]
PART I.
I
In this great year—this year of herWho loved you in your infant days, the Queen—
Who when the timid sophister
Was fain to narrow the divine demesne
Of Freedom, bade it still expand—
Loved you, in all her loveless realm alone—
Ye come to her whose gentle hand
Ay drew you to the Motherland,
Drew you till Ocean's mighty waist was spanned
By Britain's zone.
2
II
Beyond the stars your sires rejoiceWho hear to-day this iron clang and rattle,
And they recall the Channel's voice
Which in old fights lent music to the battle,
For breath of Death can never smother
For them the voice when this bright bosom heaves
With pride of Her she guards—the Mother
For whom our Drake with many a brother
Won from the world the robe above all other
The proud sea weaves.
3
III
Therefore this sight is yours and oursWhose fathers see it, wheresoe'er they dwell:
Not even the breath of Eden flowers
Can win them from the Channel's salt sweet smell;
And yonder skyey wings that hover
Kindling each steel-clad titan till he glows—
Wings of Old England's Angel-lover—
Your fathers see them shine above her—
They see our Angel of the Channel cover
Spithead with rose.
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IV
With Kings that Angel learnt to fight:Their hireling axes shivered in their helves:
His foe is now the people's spite
When bloody-minded nations kill themselves;
But still, round England's sacred crags,
His billowy squadrons roll round her ye love,
Moving with glory of varying flags
With purple pennon's golden jags,
Mirrored from every cloud that flies or drags
Or streams above.
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V
When foemen threat He smiles, He smiles!Yea, England's guardian angel stirs His wings—
Then out from furthest Scilly Isles,
Right on by Deal a glittering laughter springs,
As when of old His billowy host
Cried out “Ha! ha! they come, the ships of Spain!”—
As when that day around the coast
The news of Trafalgar was tossed
Ere yet His billows knew what England lost—
What man lay slain.
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VI
The eyes of heroes light the Past:The men who builded Time's heroic years,
Who quelled the world 'neath sail and mast,
Can see each armoured ship beyond the spheres—
Can see yon flag of curling smoke
From funnels of our Angel's Admiral Steam—
They talk of how the Armada broke
Against Britannia's shield of oak
Whilst there on wheels of storm with foam-flecked yoke
He drove his team.
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VII
Your fathers grew to demi-godsBreathing his breath, the same ye breathe to-day;
And Drake, when fronting grievous odds
Drew strength from Channel wind and Channel spray;
And, through that fateful August night
When Grenville read his name on flags of Death,
He saw, by love's high second-sight,
Far off beyond the monstrous fight,
The wings of England's Angel hovering bright
And felt His breath.
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VIII
As if His guardian coursers heardProphetic strains from mystic harps of Ocean,
His mighty heart to-day is stirred,
Hearing your voice, to some sublime emotion
Which makes His pinions glow, and makes
The Channel heave as if the waters knew;
Brothers, the hand of Evening shakes
A rosier haze through rosier flakes,
Because your Angel of the Channel wakes
To welcome you.
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IX
And see!—around that cloud-pavilion,Gleaming above the sun's bright ocean-bed,
Where veils of evening grow vermilion,
Ancestral pictures, yours and ours, are spread!
Those wings of His that glitter golden
Above the crests of Britain's iron steeds,—
Those wings of His could once embolden—
In mighty days beloved and olden—
Your god-like sires by whom they were beholden
To god-like deeds.
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X
When, strong as Death and swift as Death,He let the Spanish galleons in—and moved—
Yea moved to smite with angry breath,
Till not a sail defiled the sea he loved—
That breath which nerved for gun and pike
Each English arm till in each English hand
All weapons, splinter, marlin spike
Or sprit or sword, were strong to strike
Such strokes no Spaniard ever saw the like
By sea or land.
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XI
They fought with England long ago;They strove with her whose gate the billows keep;
On Channel chalk they sleep below—
In caverns of the great North Sea they sleep.
“Thus soldier, priest, and mariner,”
He said,—our guardian angel said,—“shall perish;
My deeps have still a sepulchre
For all whom envy or hate shall stir
To strike across them—strike at England, her
The billows cherish.”
II. PART II.
“‘British’ always has included all nationalities within
the mother-islands of the British Empire.”
George Baden-Powell, Times, June 16, 1897.
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I
Earth's memory holds a living visionOf all the sights she saw since time began;
These shores record her slow transition
From age to age while yet she yearned for man;
But when the Future makes a sign—
When Nature's mystic eyes prognosticate—
'Tis in the sunset halls that shine
Builded of cloud and air and brine:
Brothers, that untried fleet but makes me pine
To read her fate.
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II
Through this great age, with heights aboveAll other heights of England's Day save one—
Through this long reign of her we love
Hath England basked in Fortune's summer sun;
But not then, e'en then, when heedless Time
Saw Stratford's truant boy read Avon's word,
Did England's path seem so sublime
As now, when out from every clime
Her children flock to hear the Channel-chime
Their fathers heard.
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III
Fools who believed themselves her friends,And foes less dire than friends because of wrath,
Would turn her from her noble ends;
But Nature's mystic finger traced her path:
Strife hath been hers, not oft with peers,
Her hand's far shadow quelled the savage foe,
Yet sometimes falling on mine ears,
Voices have vexed my soul with fears:
What sorrows in the womb of future years
Shall England know?
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IV
How shall she stand when round the worldEnvy shall hiss—Hell's Cobra-de-Capello—
With flicker of tongue o'er folds half curled
Dull eyes of malice set in dingy yellow,
Baring her fangs, spreading her hood,
To strike our England, her whose stainless brand—
Whetted to slaughter Slaughter's brood—
Uneager even for foeman's blood—
Strikes ever home but ever strikes for good,—
How shall she stand?
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V
Still, this sweet music of your voices,Speaking from over-sea our Nelson's tongue,
Comes with a thought that now rejoices
My sinking heart, a thought that makes it young,
And She seems young for whom was wrought
What Drake hath done and Nelson, She
Whose blood of heroes dead hath bought
Empires for you—a glorious thought
Of England's mighty future that hath brought
New joy to me.
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VI
If but the thews of EnglishmenIn Drake's great day were strong for every foe,
Shall England find her conqueror when
Not English thews alone deal England's blow,
When Scotland, that twin-sister, who,
Alone among the nations, met her might
With eyes unblenched, who ne'er withdrew
From battle till her heather's blue
Shone red with southron blood of men she slew,
Strengthens the fight?
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VII
When Ireland, once so fiercely braveGainst England, standing now with many a scar
From many a fight on field and wave—
From Waterloo and Nile and Trafalgar—
Brings memories of the men who died
To keep two deathless Isles of Freedom free;
When sons of three Great sisters ride
In those proud ships with equal pride
Ready for all the world and, side by side
Share Sovereignty.
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VIII
This makes the billows leap alongWith finer gallop—leap because they know
How love hath made the sisters strong
To meet the foe, though all the world be foe—
Because they hear another sound,
A girdle of music round the orb of waters—
Voices from those who, standing round
All shores where ocean waves rebound—
Stand there with British feet on British ground
Britannia's Daughters—
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IX
Voices of those whose bond of love,Binding them each to each o'er every sea,
Is love of Her whose pulses move
To peans of an Empire's Jubilee;
Voices that come from distant lands—
From elfin halls where gem-crowned Africa
Opens at last her mystic hands,
And from that eldest born who stands
Between the world's two sister-ocean strands,
Great Canada;
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X
And from those sisters of the South,Betrothed to stars of deeper soul than ours,
Whose young lips feel the mother's mouth,
Who still remember scent of English flowers:
New Zealand shedding, far away,
Fragrance of Albion o'er the vast expanse;
Australias, round whose coral way
Pacific billows write in spray
A word in sunbeams on the gleaming day—
Faith's word, “Advance.”
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XI
All say, “Beloved Angel, ThouWhose flag above Thy Channel ne'er is furled
Thine England's wider moat is now
Ocean, who lisps her name around the world;
In Northern sun—in Southern sun,
True daughters, yea to very death, are we
Of her whose morn hath but begun—
Whose robe, our hero-fathers won—
That robe the great uniting Sea hath spun—
Her Subject Sea.”
FOUR SONNETS TO THOSE WHO CARRY THE TONGUE OF Shakspeare round the world.
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ADVANCE, AUSTRALIA!
THE PASSAGE TO ENGLAND
Yon albatross, whose stirless pinions followThe ship through smile and frown of wind and weather,
Outsails, without the labour of a feather,
Each frigate-bird and gull and ocean-swallow.
Yes, while the sunny billows wake and wallow,
Now yellow as gold—now purple as flowering heather—
Now glassing all the hues of morn together—
In play rides he o'er steaming crest and hollow!
Australia—thou whose flight shall still advance
On wings that never beat, yet never stay—
That win (like thine own bird's) the race in play—
Desert not thou, whatever winds of chance
May fret the changing waves of Time's expanse,
The ship that led thee on thy morning way!
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ENGLAND STANDS ALONE
“England stands alone: without an ally.”
A German Newspaper.
“She stands alone: ally nor friend has she,”
Saith Europe of our England—her who bore
Drake, Blake, and Nelson—Warrior-Queen who wore
Light's conquering glaive that strikes the conquered free.
Alone!—From Canada comes o'er the sea,
And from that English coast with coral shore,
The old-world cry Europe hath heard of yore
From Dover cliffs: “Ready, aye ready we!”
“Europe,” saith England, “hath forgot my boys!—
Forgot how tall, in yonder golden zone
'Neath Austral skies, my youngest born have grown
(Bearers of bayonets now and swords for toys)—
Forgot 'mid boltless thunder—harmless noise—
The sons with whom old England ‘stands alone’!”
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THE BREATH OF AVON
TO ENGLISH-SPEAKING PILGRIMS ON SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTHDAY
I
Whate'er of woe the Dark may hide in wombFor England, mother of kings of battle and song—
Rapine, or racial hate's mysterious wrong,
Blizzard of Chance, or fiery dart of Doom—
Let breath of Avon, rich of meadow-bloom,
Bind her to that great daughter sever'd long—
To near and far-off children young and strong—
With fetters woven of Avon's flower perfume.
Welcome, ye English-speaking pilgrims, ye
Whose hands around the world are join'd by him,
Who make his speech the language of the sea,
Till winds of Ocean waft from rim to rim
The Breath of Avon: let this great day be
A Feast of Race no power shall ever dim.
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II
From where the steeds of Earth's twin oceans tossTheir manes along Columbia's chariot-way;
From where Australia's long blue billows play;
From where the morn, quenching the Southern Cross,
Startling the frigate-bird and albatross
Asleep in air, breaks over Table Bay—
Come hither, pilgrims, where these rushes sway
'Tween grassy banks of Avon soft as moss!
For, if ye found the breath of Ocean sweet,
Sweeter is Avon's earthy, flowery smell,
Distill'd from roots that feel the coming spell
Of May, who bids all flowers that lov'd him meet
In meadows that, remembering Shakspeare's feet,
Hold still a dream of music where they fell.
| Jubilee greeting at Spithead to the men of Greater Britain By Theodore Watts-Dunton | |