That for a single hour beneath the sun
Earth shall endure, when England’s day is done?
A world without an England! Yea, but shorn
Of the divinest gem her breast hath worn,
What most she makes for--doomed thenceforth to run
Blind, lost, and calling for that treasured One,
Through star-sown space, unfathomably mourne!
Never again the liquid air to breathe
On a May morn among the Mendip Hills;
Never to watch the green Atlantic seethe
Around the Lizard, while the Severn fills;
Never to hear the quivering strings that hung
The speech of Chatham on the English tongue!
HESEPE, _10th July_
XII
’Tis not these Islands sundered from the Deep
By many a winding and melodious strand,
Lovely as when they issued from the Hand
That bade the Shannon from his cradle leap;
That smoothed the Cotswolds to the wandering sheep,
And spread the waters o’er the Solway sand,
And motioned where Ben Cruachan should stand,
And in his shadow laid Loch Awe to sleep;
’Tis not these shimmering woods of oak and beech,
Nor these green shires, each in its golden frame,
Like pictures hanging side by side, and each
Entangled with the music of its name--
Not all this weight of glory passing speech
Full measure of the English soul can claim.
HESEPE, _11th July_
XIII
England is England’s history, that great dome
Which ever us and our immortal dead
Draws shadow, while men’s common lives are led,
Strange thought! in that superb half-light, half-gloam.
And all who dwell in England, all who roam
The seas on great emprise inherited,
Gazing into that fulness overhead,
Behold a sanctuary and a home.
England’s a spirit that doth interfuse
Whate’er is of her, every form wherein
Herself she reincarnates, all that strews
Her bosom and her years, and works within,
And spreads, and wells, and sinks, and overflows;
And how to know her only Spirit knows.
HESEPE, _12th July_
XIV
And in that spirit interpenetrate
The numberless appealing strains that bring
The look of England into everything
That she hath looked on till the night grew late;
Where, as amongst the four gray seas she sate,
And mused upon it, she hath felt the ring
That bound her to her narrow island spring,
And something passed, and passing made her great.
And Empire mustered round her. Ere she knew
Her state, her hour was on her once again.
Herseemed that something winged from her flew.
Herseemed as though the feet of marching men
Bore past her to a music never mute
While England proudly takes that proud salute.
HESEPE, _12th July_
XV
It is her destiny. She seems to sleep.
She dreams; and nodding, world on world is born.
For her the splendour of an eastern morn
The Coromandel sands profusely steep;
The rocks of Aden sentinel the deep.
Her paths are round the Cape and round the Horn.
And where the sun goes down in seas of corn
Across the West their way her children reap.
Thus ere she hath outdreamt herself, the wheels
Of her achievement on their axle-trees
Have turned without her; and upon her steals
A sense of waking amidst unknown seas;
And wondering at her motherhood, she feels
The greatness of the Thing upon her knees.
HESEPE, _13th July_
XVI
Soul of an empire that hath far outrun
Thy purpose, England! thou who in the shade
Of thy maturing years thyself had’st laid
To rest amongst thy flocks--and lo! the sun
Set never more upon thee! One by one
The nations place them at those feet which strayed
Into the Innermost, where worlds are made,
And bless the Mother saw their race begun.
England, it must be that thou hast been sent
Some quest beyond thy vision to fulfil;
That, Mother of the Mighty, thou art meant
To be the Organ of a Mightier still;
And, while the final End we may not see,
We feel ’tis holier than or they or thee.
HESEPE, _14th July_
XVII
My country! To the height of this great thought,
With all that in thee is, with all the weight
Of thy self-consciousness, though born full late,
Upon thee, and thy thronging memories fraught
With germinating dreams, still to be brought
Unto fruition--chastened, consecrate
To the high calling of the Perfect State,
Thou must arise, or, failing, come to naught.
The Organ of the Highest! pre-ordained
To execute the fateful judgment, planned
From the Beginning by the Power that deigned
First to create in air and sea and land
Each thing that breathes and seeks its daily food,
And having formed, pronounced Creation good.
HESEPE, _15th July_
XVIII
Not to prevail by measure of thy might
O’er might that measures scarcely less than thine,
Bathing the naked world in blood and brine,
Till nature turns and sickens at the sight
--All but her vultures, gloating o’er the fight;
And the sun rages daily down the line
That doth compel his radiancy divine
So fair a world to such a doom to light--
Nay, be thy function rather to disperse
The shouldering elements, that so the core
Of pure light in this glimmering universe
May by its motion kindling more and more
The look and loveliness of Spirit bring
Into the face of every living thing.
HESEPE, _16th July_
XIX
The Hittite is no longer. Babylon
Has gone into the silence of the sand.
Mirage-like in the Syrian desert stand
The pillars of Palmyra. Greece is gone.
And where for generations softly shone
The drowsy Pax Romana, sea and land
Mouth at the fragile landmarks Hadrian planned.
The State departs for ever: Man lives on.
And England, would’st thou live, it can but be
As thou, a spirit, in the restlessness
Of thine abundant strength on land and sea
Becom’st the spirit’s vehicle and dress,
Attaining in the measure of thy span
The spirit’s measure in the Perfect Man.
HESEPE, _21st July_
XX
Man, little man, whose sun hath not declined,
Pale man with spirit written on his face,
Punched out of clay, and pitched on some mean place,
A breath of being battling with the wind,
A prisoner on Time’s floating isle confined,
Yet in himself encompassing all space,
While with the regal gesture of his race
He sweeps Eternity into his mind!
The Spirit! The Encompasser! O thou,
England my country, could I but behold
The steadiness of spirit on thy brow,
Could’st thou _encompass_ spirit, I should hold
Thee master of the Future as the Past,
The immortal, perfect nation--and the last.
HESEPE, _21st July_
XXI
Thou hast vast life in thee, howe’er uncouth,
And, unenlightened, dost possess the art
To feel the fairway home without the chart,
And erring still, inclinest still to truth.
The sense of justice and the sense of ruth
Are not yet dead within thee, and thy part
It is to be magnanimous. Thy heart
Bounds to the fulness of perpetual youth.
And while the shadows deepen into gloam,
And while the long years whiten on thy head,
Thy freshness fails not. Thou bring’st nightly home
The sense that thou hast earned a dreamless bed.
The solemn Abbey, and the whispering Dome
Open to-day to take thy Immortal Dead.
HESEPE, _22nd July_
XXII
--Our own Immortals! Ours while we can keep
An isle of quiet for you ’neath the hoar
Shade of the Minster, where the Nation bore
Your mortal relics weeping. Rest you deep!
Rest! And while children’s children softly weep
Over you, and the great rose windows pour
A glory round, at peace for evermore
In marble and in alabaster sleep!
--Knowing your England! Knowing that while Time
Tries men by fire, these men will not recede
From where their fathers of the early prime
Led them by generations great in deed
To deeds still greater, where on fields sublime
The freeborn sons of England bled--and bleed!
HESEPE, _25th July_
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Influences, XX: spelling error in “cachinnation” corrected.
England, XIV: stray period removed.