Now england lessens on my sight;
The bastioned front of Wales,
Discolored and indefinite,
There like a cloud-wreath sails:
A league, and all those thronging hills
Must sink beneath the sea;
But while one touch of Memory thrills,
They yet shall stay with me.
I claim no birthright in yon sod,
Though thence my...
I
there was a rover from a western shore,
England! whose eyes the sudden tears did drown,
Beholding the white cliff and sunny down
Of thy good realm, beyond the sea’s uproar.
I, for a moment, dreamed that, long before,
I had beheld them thus, when, with the frown
Of sovereignty, the victor’s palm and crown
Thou from the tilting-...
Mother of nations, of them eldest we,
Well is it found, and happy for the state,
When that which makes men proud first makest them great,
And such our fortune is who sprang from thee,
And brought to this new land from over sea
The faith that can with every household mate,
And freedom whereof law is magistrate,
And thoughts that make men...
I
the voice of England is a trumpet tone
When that inviolate Mother wills it so:
Nations may rise and fall, and tyrants go
Upon their devious, darkened paths: alone
England preserves her people and her throne,
Her ancient freedom, her perpetual flow
Of broad and brightened life; time shall not show
This mighty Nation pitiful and...
White england shouldering from the sea,
Green England in thy rainy veil,
Old island-nest of Liberty
And loveliest Song, all hail!
God guard thee long from scath and grief!
Not any wish of ours would mar
One richly glooming ivy-leaf,
One rosy daisy-star.
What! phantoms are we, spectre-thin,
Unfathered, out of...
Who comes to England not to learn
The love for her his fathers bore,
Breathing her air, can still return
No kindlier than he was before.
In vain, for him, from shore to shore
Those fathers strewed an alien strand
With the loved names that evermore
Are native to our ear and land.
Who sees the English elm-trees fling...
The Stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand!
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O’er all the pleasant land;
The deer across their greensward bound
Through shade and sunny gleam,
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.
The merry Homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,...
From “Snow-Bound”
THE SUN that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,...
The Chimes, the chimes of Motherland,
Of England green and old,
That out from fane and ivied tower
A thousand years have tolled;
How glorious must their music be
As breaks the hallowed day,
And calleth with a seraph’s voice
A nation up to pray!
Those chimes that tell a thousand tales,
Sweet tales of...
Ye mariners of England!
That guard our native seas;
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe!
And sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
The...
