ril and May with lips and heart so sweet;
Even so say I;
Even so say I.

VI

Love is the dust whence Eden grew so fair,
Dust of the dust that set my lover there,
Ay, and wrought the gloriole of Eve's gold hair,
Even so say I;
Even so say I.

VII

Also the springing spray, the little topmost flower
Swung by the bird that sings a little hour,
Earth's climbing spray into the heaven's blue bower,
Even so say I;
Even so say I.

And stranger, ever stranger, grew the night
Around those twain, for whom the fleecy moon
Was but a mightier Cleopatra's pearl
Dissolving in the rich dark wine of night,
While 'mid the tenderer talk of eyes and hands
And whispered nothings, his great ocean realm
Rolled round their gloomy barge, robing its hulk
With splendours Rome and Egypt never knew.
Old ocean was his Nile, his mighty queen
An English maiden purer than the dawn,
His cause the cause of Freedom, his reward
The glory of England. Strangely simple, then,
Simple as life and death, anguish and love,
To Bess appeared those mighty dawning dreams,
Whereby he shaped the pageant of the world
To a new purpose, strangely simple all
Those great new waking tides i' the world's great soul
That set towards the fall of tyranny
Behind a thunderous roar of ocean triumph
O'er burning ships and shattered fleets, while England
Grasped with sure hands the sceptre of the sea,
That untamed realm of Liberty which none
Had looked upon as aught but wilderness
Ere this, or even dreamed of as the seat
Of power and judgment and high sovereignty
Whereby all nations at the last should make
One brotherhood, and war should be no more.
And ever, as the vision broadened out,
The sense of some tremendous change at hand,
The approach of vast Armadas and the dawn
Of battle, reddening the diviner dawn
With clouds, confused it, till once more the song
Rang out triumphant o'er the glittering sea.

SONG

I

_Ye that follow the vision
Of the world's weal afar,
Have ye met with derision
And the red laugh of war;
Yet the thunder shall not hurt you,
Nor the battle-storms dismay;
Tho' the sun in heaven desert you,