Announce the ascending sun. Whatever cloud
Protracts the conflict, victory comes at last.

'What ho! ye sons of Odin and the north!
Far off your galleys tarry! English air
Reafen, your raven standard, darkened long,
Woven of enchantments in the moon's eclipse:
It rains its plague no more! The Kingdoms Seven
Ye came to set a ravening each on each:
Lo, ye have pressed and soldered them in one!

'Behold, a Sceptre rises--not o'er Kent
The first-born of the Faith; nor o'er those vales
Northumbrian, trod so long by crowned saints;
Nor Mercia's plains invincible in war:
O'er Wessex, barbarous late, and waste, and small,
The Hand that made the worlds that Sceptre lifts;
Hail tribe elect, the Judah of the Seven!

'Piercing the darkness of an age unborn,
I see a King that hides his royal robe;
Assumes the minstrel's garb. Where meet the floods
That King abides his time. I see him sweep,
Disguised, his harp within the Northmen's camp;
In fifty fights I see him victory-crowned;
I see the mighty and the proud laid low,
The humble lifted. God is over all.

'The ruined cities 'mid their embers thrill:
A voice went forth: they heard it. They shall rise,
Their penance done, and cities worthier far
With Roman vices ne'er contaminate.
These shall not boast mosaic floor gem-wrought,
And trod by sinners. In the face of heaven
Their minster turrets these shall lift on high,
Inviting God's great angels to descend
And chaunt with them God's City here on earth.

'Who through the lethal forest cleaves a road
Healthful and fresh? Who bridges stream high-swollen?
Who spreads the harvest round the poor man's cot;
Sets free the slave? On justice realms are built:
Who makes his kingdom great through equal laws
Not based on Pagan right, but rights in Christ,
First just, then free? Who from her starry gates
Beckons to Heavenly Wisdom--her who played
Ere worlds were shaped, before the eyes of God?
Who bids her walk the peopled fields of men,
The reverend street with college graced and church?
Who sings the latest of the Saxon songs?
Who tunes to Saxon speech the Tome Divine?

'Sing, happy land! The Isle that, prescient long,
Long waiting, hid her monarch in her heart,
Shall look on him and cry, "My flesh, my bone,
My son, my kin