Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
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Strange lands with alien eyes?
XVII
Calm as she stands alone, what nation
Hath lacked an alms from English hands?
What exiles from what stricken lands
Have lacked the shelter of the station
Where higher than all she stands?
XVIII
Though time discrown and change dismantle
The pride of thrones and towers that frown,
How should they bring her glories down —
The sea cast round her like a mantle,
The sea-cloud like a crown?
XIX
The sea, divine as heaven and deathless,
Is hers, and none but only she
Hath learnt the sea’s word, none but we
Her children hear in heart the breathless
Bright watchword of the sea.
XX
Heard not of others, or misheard
Of many a land for many a year,
The watchword Freedom fails not here
Of hearts that witness if the word
Find faith in England’s ear.
XXI
She, first to love the light, and daughter
Incarnate of the northern dawn,
She, round whose feet the wild waves fawn
When all their wrath of warring water
Sounds like a babe’s breath drawn,
XXII
How should not she best know, love best,
And best of all souls understand
The very soul of freedom, scanned
Far off, sought out in darkling quest
By men at heart unmanned?
XXIII
They climb and fall, ensnared, enshrouded,
By mists of words and toils they set
To take themselves, till fierce regret
Grows mad with shame, and all their clouded
Red skies hang sunless yet.
XXIV
But us the sun, not wholly risen
Nor equal now for all, illumes
With more of light than cloud that looms;
Of light that leads forth souls from prison
And breaks the seals of tombs.
XXV
Did not her breasts who reared us rear
Him who took heaven in hand, and weighed
Bright world with world in balance laid?
What Newton’s might could make not clear
Hath Darwin’s might not made?
XXVI
The forces of the dark dissolve,
The doorways of the dark are broken:
The word that casts out night is spoken,
And whence the springs of things evolve
Light born of night bears token.
XXVII
She, loving light for light’s sake only,
And truth for only truth’s, and song
For song’s sake and the sea’s, how long
Hath she not borne the world her lonely
Witness of right and wrong?
XXVIII
From light to light her eyes imperial
Turn, and require the further light,
More perfect than the sun’s in sight,
Till star and sun seem all funereal
Lamps of the vaulted night.
XXIX
She gazes till the strenuous soul
Within the rapture of her eyes
Creates or bids awake, arise,
The light she looks for, pure and whole
And worshipped of the wise.
XXX
Such sons are hers, such radiant hands
Have borne abroad her lamp of old,
Such mouths of honey-dropping gold
Have sent across all seas and lands
Her fame as music rolled.
XXXI
As music made of rolling thunder
That hurls through heaven its heart sublime,
Its heart of joy, in charging chime,
So ring the songs that round and under
Her temple surge and climb.
XXXII
A temple not by men’s hands builded,
But moulded of the spirit, and wrought
Of passion and imperious thought;
With light beyond all sunlight gilded,
Whereby the sun seems nought.
XXXIII
Thy shrine, our mother, seen for fairer
Than even thy natural face, made fair
With kisses of thine April air
Even now, when spring thy banner-bearer
Took up thy sign to bear;
XXXIV
Thine annual sign from heaven’s own arch
Given of the sun’s hand into thine,
To rear and cheer each wildwood shrine
But now laid waste by wild-winged March,
March, mad with wind like wine.
XXXV
From all thy brightening downs whereon
The windy seaward whin-flower shows
Blossom whose pride strikes pale the rose
Forth is the golden watchword gone
Whereat the world’s face glows.
XXXVI
Thy quickening woods rejoice and ring
Till earth seems glorious as the sea:
With yearning love too glad for glee
The world’s heart quivers toward the spring
As all our hearts toward thee.
XXXVII
Thee, mother, thee, our queen, who givest
Assurance to the heavens most high
And earth whereon her bondsmen sigh
That by the sea’s grace while thou livest
Hope shall not wholly die.
XXXVIII
That while thy free folk hold the van
Of all men, and the sea-spray shed
As dew more heavenly on thy head
Keeps bright thy face in sight of man,
Man’s pride shall drop not dead.
XXXIX
A pride more pure than humblest prayer,
More wise than wisdom born of doubt,
Girds for thy sake men’s hearts about
With trust and triumph that despair
And fear may cast not out.
XL
Despair may wring men’s hearts, and fear
Bow down their heads to kiss the dust,
Where patriot memories rot and rust,
And change makes faint a nation’s cheer,
And faith yields up her trust.
XLI
Not here this year have true men known,
Not here this year may true men know,
That brand of shame-compelling woe
Which bids but brave men shrink or groan
And lays but honour low.
XLII
The strong spring wind blows notes of praise,
And hallowing pride of heart, and cheer
Unchanging, toward all true men here
Who hold the trust of ancient days
High as of old this year.
XLIII
The days that made thee great are dead;
The days that now must keep thee great
Lie not in keeping of thy fate;
In thine they lie, whose heart and head
Sustain thy charge of state.
XLIV
No state so proud, no pride so just,
The sun, through clouds at sunrise curled
Or clouds across the sunset whirled,
Hath sight of, nor has man such trust
As thine in all the world.
XLV
Each hour that sees the sunset’s crest
Make bright thy shores ere day decline
Sees dawn the sun on shores of thine,
Sees west as east and east as west
On thee their sovereign shine.
XLVI
The sea’s own heart must needs wax proud
To have borne the world a child like thee.
What birth of
earth might ever be
Thy sister? Time, a wandering cloud,
Is sunshine on thy sea.
XLVII
Change mars not her; and thee, our mother,
What change that irks or moves thee mars?
What shock that shakes? what chance that jars?
Time gave thee, as he gave none other,
A station like a star’s.
XLVIII
The storm that shrieks, the wind that wages
War with the wings of hopes that climb
Too high toward heaven in doubt sublime,
Assail not thee, approved of ages
The towering crown of time.
XLIX
Toward thee this year thy children turning
With souls uplift of changeless cheer
Salute with love that casts out fear,
With hearts for beacons round thee burning,
The token of this year.
L
With just and sacred jubilation
Let earth sound answer to the sea
For witness, blown on winds as free,
How England, how her crowning nation,
Acclaims this jubilee.
THE ARMADA
1588: 1888
I
I
England, mother born of seamen, daughter fostered of the sea,
Mother more beloved than all who bear not all their children free,
Reared and nursed and crowned and cherished by the sea-wind and
the sun,
Sweetest land and strongest, face most fair and mightiest heart
in one,
Stands not higher than when the centuries known of earth were less
by three,
When the strength that struck the whole world pale fell back from
hers undone.
II
At her feet were the heads of her foes bowed down, and the
strengths of the storm of them stayed,
And the hearts that were touched not with mercy with terror were
touched and amazed and affrayed:
Yea, hearts that had never been molten with pity were molten with
fear as with flame,
And the priests of the Godhead whose temple is hell, and his heart
is of iron and fire,
And the swordsmen that served and the seamen that sped them, whom
peril could tame not or tire,
Were as foam on the winds of the waters of England which tempest
can tire not or tame.
III
They were girded about with thunder, and lightning came forth of
the rage of their strength,
And the measure that measures the wings of the storm was the
breadth of their force and the length:
And the name of their might was Invincible, covered and clothed
with the terror of God;
With his wrath were they winged, with his love were they fired,
with the speed of his winds were they shod;
With his soul were they filled, in his trust were they comforted:
grace was upon them as night,
And faith as the blackness of darkness: the fume of their balefires
was fair in his sight,
The reek of them sweet as a savour of myrrh in his nostrils: the
world that he made,
Theirs was it by gift of his servants: the wind, if they spake in
his name, was afraid,
And the sun was a shadow before it, the stars were astonished with
fear of it: fire
Went up to them, fed with men living, and lit of men’s hands for a
shrine or a pyre;
And the east and the west wind scattered their ashes abroad, that
his name should be blest
Of the tribes of the chosen whose blessings are curses from
uttermost east unto west.
II
I
Hell for Spain, and heaven for England, — God to God, and man to
man, —
Met confronted, light with darkness, life with death: since time
began,
Never earth nor sea beheld so great a stake before them set,
Save when Athens hurled back Asia from the lists wherein they
met;
Never since the sands of ages through the glass of history ran
Saw the sun in heaven a lordlier day than this that lights us
yet.
II
For the light that abides upon England, the glory that rests on her
godlike name,
The pride that is love and the love that is faith, a perfume
dissolved in flame,
Took fire from the dawn of the fierce July when fleets were
scattered as foam
And squadrons as flakes of spray; when galleon and galliass that
shadowed the sea
Were swept from her waves like shadows that pass with the clouds
they fell from, and she
Laughed loud to the wind as it gave to her keeping the glories of
Spain and Rome.
III
Three hundred summers have fallen as leaves by the storms in their
season thinned,
Since northward the war-ships of Spain came sheer up the way of the
south-west wind:
Where the citadel cliffs of England are flanked with bastions of
serpentine,
Far off to the windward loomed their hulls, an hundred and
twenty-nine,
All filled full of the war, full-fraught with battle and charged
with bale;
Then store-ships weighted with cannon; and all were an hundred and
fifty sail.
The measureless menace of darkness anhungered with hope to prevail
upon light,
The shadow of death made substance, the present and visible spirit
of night,
Came, shaped as a waxing or waning moon that rose with the fall of
day,
To the channel where couches the Lion in guard of the gate of the
lustrous bay.
Fair England, sweet as the sea that shields her, and pure as the
sea from stain,
Smiled, hearing hardly for scorn that stirred her the menace of
saintly Spain.
III
I
“They that ride over ocean wide with hempen bridle and horse of
tree,”
How shall they in the darkening day of wrath and anguish and fear
go free?
How shall these that have curbed the seas not feel his bridle who
made the sea?
God shall bow them and break them now: for what is man in the Lord
God’s sight?
Fear shall shake them, and shame shall break, and all the noon of
their pride be night:
These that sinned shall the ravening wind of doom bring under, and
judgment smite.
England broke from her neck the yoke, and rent the fetter, and
mocked the rod:
Shrines of old that she decked with gold she turned to dust, to the
dust she trod:
What is she, that the wind and sea should fight beside her, and war
with God?
Lo, the cloud of his ships that crowd her channel’s inlet with
storm sublime,
Darker far than the tempests are that sweep the skies of her
northmost clime;
Huge and dense as the walls that fence the secret darkness of
unknown time.
Mast on mast as a tower goes past, and sail by sail as a cloud’s
wing spread;
Fleet by fleet, as the throngs whose feet keep time with death in
his dance of dread;
Galleons dark as the helmsman’s bark of old th
at ferried to hell
the dead.
Squadrons proud as their lords, and loud with tramp of soldiers
and chant of priests;
Slaves there told by the thousandfold, made fast in bondage as
herded beasts;
Lords and slaves that the sweet free waves shall feed on, satiate
with funeral feasts.
Nay, not so shall it be, they know; their priests have said it; can
priesthood lie?
God shall keep them, their God shall sleep not: peril and evil
shall pass them by:
Nay, for these are his children; seas and winds shall bid not his
children die.
II
So they boast them, the monstrous host whose menace mocks at the
dawn: and here
They that wait at the wild sea’s gate, and watch the darkness of
doom draw near,
How shall they in their evil day sustain the strength of their
hearts for fear?
Full July in the fervent sky sets forth her twentieth of changing
morns:
Winds fall mild that of late waxed wild: no presage whispers or
wails or warns:
Far to west on the bland sea’s breast a sailing crescent uprears
her horns.
Seven wide miles the serene sea smiles between them stretching from
rim to rim:
Soft they shine, but a darker sign should bid not hope or belief
wax dim:
God’s are these men, and not the sea’s: their trust is set not on
her but him.
God’s? but who is the God whereto the prayers and incense of these