Part 4
Yet the sport wind that doubling oft blows home Some welcome unforeseen felicity, Is but, within the dreams of poesie, Life’s average accident, which all who roam The spacious earth, or try the beckoning foam Of some unvisited soul-haunting sea, May count on as their portion--even as we Who chance a star or two in this weird gloam. Hence as in all high toil which must be traced In long-drawn sequence, linking part to part, Not chance nor inspiration can fulfil The welded whole, nor vanquish that distaste Which ever comes with pause; but sovereign Art Herself must bow to man’s more sovereign Will.
HESEPE, _24th June_
IV
So forward still, might but my strength avail Out of the brooding darkness of my plight, Each day to bring one glimmering shaft of light, Each night to add some fragment to the tale, That so I sleep. Else o’er my dreams prevail These sorrows, or within me hour-long smite The hammers of the brain, and turn the night Into a thing to make man’s reason fail. --A little further; for the thoughts still rise Over me like a soughing wind, that blows From where the surges boom along the graile Of the world’s misery under lowering skies, --A little further and my task I close, Lest twilight overtake me and I stale.
HESEPE, _25th June_
ENGLAND
I
England, the strain of weakness in thee shows Like to some fell distemper which doth threat Thy noble life with blight, and doth beget Many malignant sores. The evil flows Not from one source, but gradually grows With thine own growth of years, wherein are met All the deep instincts that did ever fret The soul of freedom against freedom’s foes. But whatsoe’er the form, the effect is one; Some great cause grandly tried and bravely lost, Some work of beauty marred upon the loom, And at the final reckoning, something done, Yet at a bitter and a fearful cost-- In broken hearts and many a needless tomb.
HESEPE, _25th June_
II
I heard it in the strife of other days; It reached me in my home across the sea, That the great soul that made my England free, And now must make her perfect, idly plays With the tremendous issue; that they raise Sedition’s banner with impunity, And legislators, hot with laboured plea, Pile law on law, while Law herself decays. It is the everlasting cloud that dwells Upon the summit, compassed in one word, Disruption, whose deep thunder as it swells Unnerves us, and arrests the falling sword, Even to this hour, when but to differ spells Lese-majesty, and loyalty means accord.
HESEPE, _25th June_
III
Man lives by love. The state subsists by Law. And in these sacred islands east and west, Constant of late the Beast its scaly breast Half rears from earth, and with its unclean paw And bloody fang a-work, and dripping jaw, Offers at England. It is time this pest Were exorcised, and Unrest laid to rest, With all that dares to hold thee not in awe. So thou deal’st faithfully with God and man; With man, who prays thee, England, but to place Thy heavy hand on all that doth immerse The god-like in him, and distort his plan; With God, who made thee regent for a space Over a portion of His Universe.
HESEPE, _1st July_
IV
England, I trust thee. What thy soul hath planned Will be performed; and towards that last long end Thou hast not wavered since thou first did’st send Ship hot on ship, by freemen freely manned, Over the sea to France’s sacred strand. Faithful thou art, and knowest well to blend Patience with resolution, and to lend To thy heart’s aim thy gauntleted right hand. This in the main. And yet the enterprise Articulated, mocks the purposed whole With fitful effort; and the dread doth loom, As each fresh crisis darkens all the skies, That the Disruptive in thy restless soul, Become habitual, is become thy doom.
HESEPE, _28th June_
V
Forget it, England, that this Tempest finds Thy life at home with troubles overrun, Issues unsettled, justice to be done, And dark distrust corrupting all men’s minds. Trust England, all her sons. Her millstone grinds Slowly perchance; but while in heaven the sun Endureth, while their rounds the planets run, Her word is bond, and what she binds she binds. And England, see thou that these debts are paid! Be firmly true to thine own children. Stand For justice. Let these arms aside be laid. And in our dear inviolable land None but thyself go armed--the only blade Out of its sheath, that flashing in thy hand.
HESEPE, _28th June_
VI
Until the day that England’s sons shall learn Not in that instant only when there burst Thunders upon her to place England first, But steadily, and in her face discern The hunger-look of one who still doth yearn Over the children whom her breast hath nursed; The long look of a mother, and her thirst To see her children’s eyes that look return-- Not till the day when o’er our local strife The feeling of our nationality Shall rise spontaneous as our English Life, Outsoaring every animosity By sheer force of its grandeur--shall we see The truth come home and our free England free.
HESEPE, _29th June_
VII
Have you e’er thought, you people, have you thought How great a thing it is in these great days But to belong to England? The world stays Upon the event. ’Twas English armies caught The onfall of the Cyclone. While they fought, The world forbore to breathe. Stern Fate delays The issue; but that service and its praise While England lives will never be forgot. There was an honour that the ages kept For English arms from immemorial time, While yet the chivalry of nations slept With mastodon and mammoth in the slime. The æons rolled. Fate nodded. England woke. The hour boomed forth. ’Twas England took the stroke.
HESEPE, _1st July_
VIII
Let every child of England every day, While o’er the world these battle-thunders roll, Enter into the silence of his soul, And there communing with his conscience say: “I am a child of England, and I pray That with a single eye and one fixed goal, Thou grant me, God, to give my being whole To England in her hour of agony. Chasten me to the greatness of my fate; And, self-divided, make me one again, That, as to this last rally congregate The last stern remnants of my countrymen, Thou may’st behold Thy England move as one, Swift, final, justified of every son.”
HESEPE, _2nd July_
IX
There have been moments haunted by the sound Of riot in our midst and foul rapine, Which, with more wealth, still makes our lives more mean, When I have asked: “If one who strove to ground Our life afresh should cast his eyes around Amongst the people, one great class to glean Out of the whole, that should keep England clean, Where should this pure, effectual class be found?” No answer came from those who still divide The old tradition of a worn-out past. I asked the Church: the labouring lost replied; For these the Publican. And at the last I looked into the honest eyes of youth, And knew--the exceeding bitterness of truth.
HESEPE, _5th July_
X
My countrymen, if while upon the brink Of this Penultimate of Destiny, The world with gathered sinews, anxiously Craning upon the plunge, awaits the wink Of swithering Mars, I could but make you think A wildish thought on purpose, it would be That England in a night beneath the sea Should like some greater Krakatoa sink. Then while to water and oblivion The great ship heels majestically down, Ask ye what world it were in which the dawn Sparkled no more on Ocean’s jewelled crown, But in that place where England used to be Spouted and plashed the insufferable sea.
HESEPE, _9th July_
XI
Can it be thought, or can the thought be borne, 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.