Collected Poems Volume I Part 26

VI

Ay! Lift the flag of England; And lo, that Eastern cross is there, Veiled with a hundred meanings as our English eyes are veiled; Yet to the grander dawn we move oblivious of the sign we bear, Oblivious of the heights we climb until the last be scaled; Then with all the earth before us And the great cross floating o'er us We shall break the sword we forged of old, so weak we were and blind; While the inviolate heaven discloses England's Rose of all the roses Dawning wide and ever wider o'er the kingdom of mankind.

VII

Hasten the Kingdom, England; For then all nations shall be one; One as the ordered stars are one that sing upon their way, One with the rhythmic glories of the swinging sea and the rolling sun, One with the flow of life and death, the tides of night and day; One with all dreams of beauty, One with all laws of duty; One with the weak and helpless while the one sky burns above; Till eyes by tears made glorious Look up at last victorious, And lips that starved break open in one song of life and love.

VIII

Hasten the Kingdom, England; And when the Spring returns again Rekindle in our English hearts the universal Spring, That we may wait in faith upon the former and the latter rain, Till all waste places burgeon and the wildernesses sing; Pour the glory of thy pity Through the dark and troubled city; Pour the splendour of thy beauty over wood and meadow fair; May the G.o.d of battles guide thee And the Christ-child walk beside thee With a word of peace for England in the dawn of Nelson's Year.

IN TIME OF WAR

I

To-night o'er Bagshot heath the purple heather Rolls like dumb thunder to the splendid West; And mighty ragged clouds are ma.s.sed together Above the scarred old common's broken breast; And there are hints of blood between the boulders, Red glints of fiercer blossom, bright and bold; And round the s.h.a.ggy mounds and sullen shoulders The gorse repays the sun with savage gold.

And now, as in the West the light grows holy, And all the hollows of the heath grow dim, Far off, a sulky rumble rolls up slowly Where guns at practice growl their evening hymn.

And here and there in bare clean yellow s.p.a.ces The print of horse-hoofs like an answering cry Strikes strangely on the sense from lonely places Where there is nought but empty heath and sky.

The print of warlike hoofs, where now no figure Of horse or man along the sky's red rim Breaks on the low horizon's rough black rigour To make the gorgeous waste less wild and grim;

Strangely the hoof-prints strike, a Crusoe's wonder, Framed with sharp furze amongst the footless fells, A menace and a mystery, rapt asunder, As if the whole wide world contained nought else,--

Nought but the grand despair of desolation Between us and that wild, how far, how near, Where, clothed with thunder, nation grapples nation, And Slaughter grips the clay-cold hand of Fear.

II

And far above the purple heath the sunset stars awaken, And ghostly hosts of cloud across the West begin to stream, And all the low soft winds with m.u.f.fled cannonades are shaken, And all the blood-red blossom draws aloof into a dream; A dream--no more--and round the dream the clouds are curled together; A dream of two great stormy hosts embattled in the sky; For there against the low red heavens each sombre ridge of heather Up-heaves a hedge of bayonets around a battle-cry;

Melts in the distant battle-field or brings the dream so near it That, almost, as the rifted clouds around them swim and reel, A thousand grey-lipped faces flash--ah, hark, the heart can hear it-- The sharp command that lifts as one the levelled lines of steel.

And through the purple thunders there are silent shadows creeping With murderous gleams of light, and then--a mighty leaping roar Where foe and foe are met; and then--a long low sound of weeping As Death laughs out from sea to sea, another fight is o'er.

Another fight--but ah, how much is over? Night descending Draws o'er the scene her ghastly moon-shot veil with piteous hands; But all around the bivouac-glare the shadowy pickets wending See sights, hear sounds that only war's own madness understands.

No circle of the accursed dead where dreaming Dante wandered, No city of death's eternal dole could match this mortal world Where men, before the living soul and quivering flesh are sundered, Through all the b.e.s.t.i.a.l shapes of pain to one wide grave are hurled.

But in the midst for those who dare beyond the fringe to enter Be sure one kingly figure lies with pale and blood-soiled face, And round his brows a ragged crown of thorns; and in the centre Of those pale folded hands and feet the sigil of his grace.

See, how the pale limbs, marred and scarred in love's lost battle, languish; See how the splendid pa.s.sion still smiles quietly from his eyes: Come, come and see a king indeed, who triumphs in his anguish, Who conquers here in utter loss beneath the eternal skies.

For unto lips so deadly calm what answer shall be given?

Oh pale, pale king so deadly still beneath the unshaken stars, Who shall deny thy kingdom here, though heaven and earth were riven, With the last roar of onset in the world's intestine wars?

The laugh is Death's; he laughs as erst o'er hours that England cherished, "Count up, count up the stricken homes that wail the first-born son, Count by your starved and fatherless the tale of what hath perished; Then gather with your foes and ask if you--or I--have won."

III

The world rolls on; and love and peace are mated: Still on the breast of England, like a star, The blood-red lonely heath blows, consecrated, A brooding practice-ground for blood-red war.

Yet is there nothing out of tune with Nature There, where the skylark showers his earliest song, Where sun and wind have moulded every feature, And one world-music bears each note along.

There many a brown-winged kestrel swoops or hovers In poised and patient quest of his own prey; And there are fern-clad glens where happy lovers May kiss the murmuring summer noon away.

There, as the primal earth was--all is glorious Perfect and wise and wonderful in view Of that great heaven through which we rise victorious O'er all that strife and change and death can do.

No nation yet has risen o'er earth's first nature; Though love illumed each individual mind, Like some half-blind, half-formed primeval creature The State still crawled a thousand years behind.

Still on the standards of the great World-Powers Lion and bear and eagle sullenly brood, Whether the slow folds flap o'er halcyon hours Or stream tempestuously o'er fields of blood.

By war's red evolution we have risen Far, since fierce Erda chose her conquering few, And out of Death's red gates and Time's grey prison They burst, elect from battle, tried and true.

But now Death mocks at youth and love and glory, Chivalry slinks behind his loaded mines, With meaner murderous lips War tells her story, And round her cunning brows no laurel s.h.i.+nes.

And here to us the eternal charge is given To rise and make our low world touch G.o.d's high: To hasten G.o.d's own kingdom, Man's own heaven, And teach Love's grander army how to die.

No kingdom then, no long-continuing city Shall e'er again be stablished by the sword; No blood-bought throne defy the powers of pity, No despot's crown outweigh one helot's word.

Imperial England, breathe thy marching orders: The great host waits; the end, the end is close, When earth shall know thy peace in all her borders, And all her deserts blossom with thy Rose.

Princedoms and peoples rise and flash and perish As the dew pa.s.ses from the flowering thorn; Yet the one Kingdom that our dreams still cherish Lives in a light that blinds the world's red morn.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, the days darken; We would not have thee slacken watch or ward, Nor doff thine armour till the whole world hearken, Nor till Time bid thee lay aside the sword.

Hasten the Kingdom; hamlet, heath, and city, We are all at war, one bleeding bulk of pain; Little we know; but one thing--by G.o.d's pity-- We know, and know all else on earth is vain.

We know not yet how much we dare, how little; We dare not dream of peace; yet, as at need, England, G.o.d help thee, let no jot or t.i.ttle Of Love's last law go past thee without heed.

_Who saves his life shall lose it!_ The great ages Bear witness--Rome and Babylon and Tyre Cry from the dust-stopped lips of all their sages,-- There is no hope if man can climb no higher.

England, by G.o.d's grace set apart to ponder A little while from battle, ah, take heed, Keep watch, keep watch, beside thy sleeping thunder; Call down Christ's pity while those others bleed;

Waken the G.o.d within thee, while the sorrow Of battle surges round a distant sh.o.r.e, While Time is thine, lest on some deadly morrow The moving finger write--_but thine no more_.

Little we know--but though the advancing aeons Win every painful step by blood and fire, Though tortured mouths must chant the world's great paeans, And martyred souls proclaim the world's desire;

Though war be nature's engine of rejection, Soon, soon, across her universal verge The soul of man in sacred insurrection Shall into G.o.d's diviner light emerge.