Alfred Austin: Verses about England

I had a dream of England. Wild and weird,
The billows ravened round her, and the wrack,
Darkening and dwindling, blotted out the track,
Then flashed on her a bolt that scorched and seared.
She, writhing in her ruin, rolled, and reared,
Then headlonged unto doom, that drove her back
To welter on the waters, blind and black,
A homeless hulk, a derelict unsteered.
Wailing I woke, and through the dawn descried,
Throned on the waves that threatened to o'erwhelm,
The England of my dream resplendent ride,
And armoured Wisdom, sovran at the helm,
Through foaming furrows of the future guide
To wider empire a majestic Realm.

Men deemed thee fallen, did they? fallen like Rome,
Coiled into self to foil a Vandal throng:
Not wholly shorn of strength, but vainly strong;
Weaned from thy fame by a too happy home,
Scanning the ridges of thy teeming loam,
Counting thy flocks, humming thy harvest song,
Callous, because thyself secure, 'gainst wrong,
Behind the impassable fences of the foam!
The dupes! Thou dost but stand erect, and lo!
The nations cluster round; and while the horde
Of wolfish backs slouch homeward to their snow,
Thou, 'mid thy sheaves in peaceful seasons stored,
Towerest supreme, victor without a blow,
Smilingly leaning on thy undrawn sword!

From tangled brake and trellised bower
Bring every bud that blows,
But never will you find the flower
To match an English rose.
It blooms with more than city grace,
Though rustic and apart;
It has a smile upon its face,
And a dewdrop in its heart.

Though wide the goodly world around
Your fancy may have strayed,
Where was the woman ever found
To match an English maid?
At work she smiles, through play she sings,
She doubts not nor denies;
She'll cling to you as woodbine clings,
And love you till she dies.

If you would put it to the proof,
Then round the zodiac roam;
But never will you find the roof
To match an English home.
You hear the sound of children's feet
Still pattering on the stair:
'Tis made by loving labour sweet,
And sanctified by prayer.

Go traverse tracts sublime or sweet,
Snow-peak or scorched ravine,
But where will you the landscape meet
To match an English scene?
The hamlet hallowed by its spire,
The wildwood fresh with flowers,
Garden and croft and thorp and byre
Gleaming through silvery showers.

Across the wave, along the wind,
Flutter and plough your way,
But where will you a Sceptre find
To match the English Sway?
Its conscience holds the world in awe
With blessing or with ban;
Its Freedom guards the Reign of Law,
And majesty of Man!

Because of our dear Mother, the fair Past,
On whom twin Hope and Memory safely lean,
And from whose fostering wisdom none shall wean
Their love and faith, while love and faith shall last:
Mother of happy homes and Empire vast,
Of hamlets meek, and many a proud demesne,
Blue spires of cottage smoke 'mong woodlands green,
And comely altars where no stone is cast.
And shall we barter these for gaping Throne,
Dismantled towers, mean plots without a tree,
A herd of hinds too equal to be free,
Greedy of other's, jealous of their own,
And, where sweet Order now breathes cadenced tone,
Envy, and hate, and all uncharity?

Banish the fear! 'Twere infamy to yield
To folly what to force had been denied,
Or in the Senate quail before the tide
We should have stemmed and routed in the field.
What though no more we brandish sword and shield,
Reason's keen blade is ready at our side,
And manly brains, in wisdom panoplied,
Can foil the shafts that treacherous sophists wield.
The spirit of our fathers is not quelled.
With weapons valid even as those they bore,
Domain, Throne, Altar, still may be upheld,
So we disdain, as they disdained of yore,
The foreign froth that foams against our shore,
Only by its white cliffs to be repelled!

Therefore, chime sweet and safely, village bells,
And, rustic chancels, woo to reverent prayer,
And, wise and simple, to the porch repair
Round which Death, slumbering, dreamlike heaves and swells.
Let hound and horn in wintry woods and dells
Make jocund music though the boughs be bare,
And whistling yokel guide his gleaming share
Hard by the homes where gentle lordship dwells.
Therefore sit high enthroned on every hill,
Authority! and loved in every vale;
Nor, old Tradition, falter in the tale
Of lowly valour led by lofty will:
And, though the throats of envy rage and rail,
Be fair proud England proud fair England still!

Who would not die for England!

This great thought,
Through centuries of Glory handed down
By storied vault in monumental fane,
And homeless grave in lone barbaric lands,
Homeless but not forgotten, so can thrill
With its imperious call the hearts of men,
That suddenly from dwarf ignoble lives
They rise to heights of nobleness, and spurn
The languid couch of safety, to embrace
Duty and Death that evermore were twin.

``Who would not die for England!''

Thus He said,
Who at the holiest of all English hearths,
The holiest and the highest, had been given
A seat, an English Princess for his Bride,-
Now at that hearth weeping her widowed tears,
Bitter and barren as the winter rain.
``It is not meet that I, whom this famed Isle,
This generous, mighty, and majestic Land,
Ennobled as her son, should not repay
Her splendid gift of kinship. Let me go,
Go where they go, Her world-researching race,
That slumber pillowed on the half-drawn sword,
And wake at whisper of her will, to greet
Duty and Death that evermore were twin.''

Who would not die for England!

And for Her
He dies, who, whether in the fateful fight,
Or in the marish jungle, where She bids,
Far from encircling fondness, far from kiss
Of clinging babes, hushes his human heart,
And, stern to every voice but Hers, obeys
Duty and Death that evermore were twin.

So across the far-off foam,
Bring him hither, bring him home,
Over avenues of wave,-
English ground,-to English grave;
Where his soldier dust may rest,
England's Flag above his breast,
And, love-tended, long may bloom
English flowers about his tomb.

Who would not die for England, that can give
A sepulture like this, 'mid hamlet crofts,
And comely cottages with old-world flowers,
And rustic seats for labour-palsied limbs,
The pensioners of Peace! I linger here,
Pondering the dark inexplicable Night,
Here by this river-girt sequestered shrine
Whose vanished walls were reared anew by Him,
Of Princes the most princely, if it be
That Wisdom, Love, and Virtue more adorn
Sarcophagus of Kings than dripping spears,
Lone wailing hearths and hecatombs of slain.
And He too died for England, He who lived
Scorning all joy save that great joy of all,
The love of one true woman, She a Queen,
Empress and Queen, yet not the more revered,
Not the more loved, for those resounding names,
Than for the lowlier titles, Gracious, Good,
The Worthiest of Women ever crowned.

Sweetest Consort, sagest Prince!
Snows on snows have melted since
England lost you;-late to learn
Worth that never can return;
Learned to know you as you were,
Known, till then, alone to Her!
Luminous as sun at noon,
Tender as the midnight moon,
Steadfast as the steered-by star,
Wise as Time and Silence are:
Deaf to vain-belittling lie,
Deaf to gibing jealousy;
Thinking only of the goal,
And, like every lofty soul,
Scanning with a far-off smile
The revilings of the vile.

Yes, He too died for England! thence withdrawn
Dim to that undiscoverable land
Where our lost loved ones dwell with wistful eyes,
And lips that look but speak not. . . . But away!
Away from these soft-whispering waves that make
A dulcet dirge around the new-delved grave,
To bluff East-Anglia, where on wind-swept lawns
The sanguine crocus peeps from underground
To feel the sun and only finds the snow;
And, whinnying on the norland blast, the surge
Leaps against iron coast with iron hoof,
As though the hosts of Denmark foamed afresh,
Caparisoned for ravin! And I see
A cradle, not a coffin, and therein
Another Child to England; and, veiled Fate
Over it bent with deep-divining gaze,
And with oracular lips, like nurse inspired,
Foretelling the fair Future.

``Another Albert shalt Thou be, so known,
So known, so honoured, and His name shall stand
The sponsor to your spotlessness, until
Dawns the full day when, conscious of your soul,
Your soul, your self, and that high mission laid
On all of such begetting, you may seize
The sceptre of your will, and, thus-wise armed
Against the sirens of disloyal sense,
Like to your pure progenitor abide
In God's stern presence, and surrender never
That last prerogative of all your race,
To live and die for England!''

There! once again I stand on home,
Though round me still there swirls the foam,
Leaping athwart the vessel's track
To bid a wanderer welcome back,
And though as yet through softening haze
White cliffs but vaguely greet my gaze.
For, England! yours the waves, the spray,
And, be one's foothold what it may,
Wherever billow wafts or wends,
Your soil is trodden, your shore extends.
How stern! how sweet! Though fresh from lands
Where soft seas heave on slumbering strands,
And zephyrs moistened by the south
Seem kisses from an infant's mouth,
My northern blood exults to face
The rapture of this rough embrace,
Glowing in every vein to feel
The cordial caress of steel
From spear-blue air and sword-blue sea,
The armour of your liberty.
Braced by the manly air, I reach
My soul out to the approaching beach,
And own, the instant I arrive,
The dignity of being alive!

And now with forward-faring feet
Eager I leap to land, and greet
The hearty grasp, the honest gaze,
The voice that means the thing it says,
The gait of men by birthright free,
Unceremonial courtesy.
None frown, none cringe, but, fearless-eyed,
Are kindly all; since, side by side,
Authority and Freedom reign
In twin equality, and drain
Their sanction from the self-same breast,
And Law is wise Will manifest.
Yes, this is England, frank and fair:
I tread its turf, I breathe its air,
And catch from every stalwart lung
The music of my mother tongue.

And who are these that cluster round
With hastening feet and silvery sound,
And eyes as liquid as the dawn,
When laughs the dew on Kentish lawn?
These England's daughters, frank yet arch,
Supple as April, strong as March:
Like pink-white windflowers in the grove,
That came while east and west wind strove
For mastery, and Spring seemed late,
Hardy alike and delicate.
How well their faces fit the scene,
The copses gray, the hedgerows green,
The white-veiled blackthorn, gorse afire,
The cottage yew, the village spire;
The pastures flecked with frisking lambs
Around their gravely grazing dams;
The children loitering home from school,
Their hands and pinafores all full
Of cuckoo-pint and bluebell spike,
Gathered in dingle, dell, and dyke;
The comely homes one just can see
Through flowering belts of bush and tree,
That all combine, all, all conspire,
To more than satisfy desire,
To make one love this lovely earth,
And bless Heaven for one's British birth.

Bewitching climes! where late I sought
In change of scene a change of thought,
Refreshment from familiar ground,
And, what I sought for, more than found,
Where old enchantment haunteth still
Ligurian coast and Tuscan hill,
Climes I have ventured oft and long
To celebrate in faltering song,
Where fearless almond, faery larch,
Smiling, disarm the frown of March,
Snow hath no terrors, frost no sting,
And playful Winter mimics Spring,
Deem me not thankless, nor deny
Fresh welcome from your shore and sky,
Repose from thought so oft implored,
And ne'er refused, if, now restored
By you to health, by you to home,
Glad I return, late glad to roam.
For dear to me though wayside shrine
By silent gorge or murmuring brine;
Dear though the barefoot peasant folk
Who lop the vine and steer the yoke
Of soft-eyed, sleek-skinned, creamy beeves,
Up narrow ways to broad slant eaves;
The stony mule-tracks twisting slow
Up slopes where cherry-blossoms blow
'Mid olive gray and ilex brown,
On to some sun-bronzed mountain town;
The hush and cool of marble domes,
Where, wed to reverie, one roams
Through transept, chancel, cloister, cell,
Where still with far-off faces dwell
Sages and saints devoutly limned
By hands long dust and eyes long dimmed;
Dear though all these, and ne'er forgot,
No southern shore, no sunniest spot,
Not Roccabruna's hamlet crest,
Not Eza's brow, not Taggia's breast,
Not Bellosguardo's sunset hour,
Not Dante's seat nor Giotto's Tower,
Nor even Spiaggiascura's foam,
Moisten and melt my heart like home.
For here the cuckoo seems more glad,
The nightingale more sweetly sad,
Primroses more akin in gaze
To childlike wonder, childlike ways;
And all things that one sees and hears,
Since rooted in the bygone years,
And blending with their warm caress
A touch of homely tenderness,
Bid the quick instinct in one's blood
Pay tribute unto motherhood.
How should strange lands, it boots not where,
Divorce one from one's native air,
Or in a loyal breast dethrone
Unreasoning reverence for one's own?
Yet love and reason surely blend
To stir this passion and commend?
And who will blame if, though one seeks
In gentler tides, and sterner peaks
That tower above a wider plain,
Contrast to northern hill and main,
I cherish still and hold apart
The fondest feeling in my heart
For where, beneath one's parent sky,
Our dear ones live, our dead ones lie?

And you, dear friend, who linger still
Beside the iris-crested rill
That silvers through your olives gray
From convent-capped Fiesole,
Think not that I forget, forswear,
The scenes we lately vowed so fair.
To these your wandering footsteps bring
The freshness of an English Spring;
And even Florence sunnier glows,
When Phyllis prattles and Ivor crows.
And, though among them still you stray,
Sweet-lengthening-out a Tuscan May,
You too will here return before
Our Northern roses blow once more,
To prove to all of kindred birth,
For winsome grace and sterling worth,
Nothing can match, where'er we roam,
An English wife in English home.