hour
Strikes, as it must, for valour of heart,
Virtue, and patience, and unblenching hope,
And the inflexible resolve
That, come the World in arms,
This breeder of nations, _ENGLAND_, keeping the seas
Hers as from _GOD_, shall in the sight of _GOD_
Stand justified of herself
Wherever her unretreating bugles blow!
Remember that she lived
That this magnificent Power might still perdure--
Your friend, your passionate servant, counsellor, Queen.

IV

Be that your chief of mourning--that!--
_ENGLAND_, O Mother, and you,
The daughter Kingdoms born and reared
Of _ENGLAND'S_ travail and sweet blood;
And never will you lands,
The live Earth over and round,
Wherethrough for sixty royal and radiant years
Her drum-tap made the dawns
English--Never will you
So fittingly and well have paid your debt
Of grief and gratitude to the souls
That sink in _ENGLAND'S_ harness into the dream:
'I die for _ENGLAND'S_ sake, and it is well':
As now to this valiant, wonderful piece of earth,
To which the assembling nations bare the head,
And bend the knee,
In absolute veneration--once your Queen.

_Sceptre and orb and crown_,
_High ensigns of a sovranty empaling_
_The glory and love and praise of a whole half-world_,
_Fall from her_, _and_, _preceding_, _she departs_
_Into the old_, _indissoluble Peace_.

EPILOGUE

Into a land
Storm-wrought, a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred,
Helpless, degraded, desolate,
Peace, the White Angel, comes.
Her eyes are as a mother's. Her good hands
Are comforting, and helping; and her voice
Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring
Falls on the World, and there is no more pain.
And, in her influence, hope returns, and life,
And the passion of endeavour: so that, soon,
The idle ports are insolent with keels;
The stithies roar, and the mills thrum
With energy and achievement; weald and wold
Exult; the cottage-garden teems
With innocent hues and odours; boy and girl
Mate prosperously; there are sweet women to kiss;
There are good women to breed. In a golden fog,
A large, full-stomached faith in kindliness
All over the world, the nation, in a dream
Of money and love and sport, hangs at the paps
Of well-being, and so
Goes fattening, mellowing, dozing, rotting down
Into a rich deliquium of decay.

Then, if the Gods be good,
Then, if the Gods be other than mischievous,
Down from their footstools, down
With a million-throated shouting, swoops and storms
War, the Red Angel, the Awakener