tep by blood and fire,
Though tortured mouths must chant the world's great paeans,
And martyred souls proclaim the world's desire;

Though war be nature's engine of rejection,
Soon, soon, across her universal verge
The soul of man in sacred insurrection
Shall into God's diviner light emerge.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, queen and mother;
Little we know of all Time's works and ways;
Yet this, this, this is sure: we need none other
Knowledge or wisdom, hope or aim or praise,

But to keep this one stormy banner flying
In this one faith that none shall e'er disprove,
Then drive the embattled world before thee, crying,
There is one Emperor, whose name is Love.

ODE FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF SWINBURNE

I

He needs no crown of ours, whose golden heart
Poured out its wealth so freely in pure praise
Of others: him the imperishable bays
Crown, and on Sunium's height he sits apart:
He hears immortal greetings this great morn:
Fain would we bring, we also, all we may,
Some wayside flower of transitory bloom,
Frail tribute, only born
To greet the gladness of this April day
Then waste on death's dark wind its faint perfume.

II

Here on this April day the whole sweet Spring
Speaks thro' his music only, or seems to speak.
And we that hear, with hearts uplift and weak,
What can we more than claim him for our king?
Here on this April day (and many a time
Shall April come and find him singing still)
He is one with the world's great heart beyond the years,
One with the pulsing rhyme
Of tides that work some heavenly rhythmic will
And hold the secret of all human tears.

III

For he, the last of that immortal race
Whose music, like a robe of living light
Re-clothed each new-born age and made it bright
As with the glory of Love's transfiguring face,
Reddened earth's roses, kindled the deep blue
Of England's radiant, ever-singing sea,
Recalled the white Thalassian from the foam.
Woke the dim stars anew
And triumphed in the triumph of Liberty,
We claim him; but he hath not here his home.

IV

Not here; round him to-day the clouds divide:
We know what faces thro' that rose-flushed air
Now bend above him: Shelley's