England, this is the land
That holds my heart in her sweet hand.
This is she whose turf, I pray,
Will hide me, on her breast, one day._

Cast you down on the close-cropped turf,
See how the white cliff spreads the surf,
On green-eyed seas that glitter and trail
Into the south like a peacock's tail.

Then, come away over the hills of thyme,
Where folds like elfin belfries chime
Till Eve, in a cloud of her dusky hair,
Makes it Elf-land everywhere.

You shall pity the king on his throne.
You shall know what never was known.
All the glory of all the skies
Utterly yours in your true love's eyes;

All the bloom to the world's end
And all the heavens that over it bend,
Compacted in one garden white,
The garden of your love's delight.

_This is England, this is the land
That holds my soul in her sweet hand.
This is she whose turf, I pray,
Will hide me on her heart one day._

OLDER THAN THE HILLS

Older than the hills, older than the sea,
Older than the heart of the Spring,
O, what is this that breaks
From the blind shell, wakes,
Wakes, and is gone like a wing?

Older than the sea, older than the moon,
Older than the heart of the May,
What is this blind refrain
Of a song that shall remain
When the singer is long gone away?

Older than the moon, older than the stars,
Older than the wind in the night,--
Though the young dews are sweet
On the heather at our feet
And the blue hills laughing back the light,--

Till the stars grow young, till the hills grow young,
O, Love, we shall walk through Time,
Till we round the world at last,
And the future be the past,
And the winds of Eden greet us from the prime.

THE TORCH

(_Sussex Landscape_)

Is it your watch-fire, elves, where the down with its darkening shoulder
Lifts on the death of the sun, out of the valley of thyme?
Dropt on the broad chalk path and, cresting the ridge of it, smoulder
Crimson as blood on the white, halting my feet as they climb,

Clusters of clover-bloom, spilled from what negligent arms in the tender
Dusk of the great grey world, last of the tints of the day;
Beautiful, sorrowful, strange last stain of that perishing splendour.
Elves, from what torn white feet trickled that red on the way?

No--from the sun-burnt hands of what lovers that fade in the distance?
Here, was it here that t