that burgeon
and yearn,
Shall be whitened with ashes of women and children and men that
burn.

For the mother shall burn with the babe sprung forth of her womb in
fire,
And bride with bridegroom, and brother with sister, and son with
sire;
And the noise of the flames shall be sweet in thine ears as the
sound of a lyre.

Yea, so shall thy kingdom be stablished, and so shall the signs of
it be:
And the world shall know, and the wind shall speak, and the sun
shall see,
That these are the works of thy servants, whose works bear witness
to thee.

II

But the dusk of the day falls fruitless, whose light should have
lit them on:
Sails flash through the gloom to shoreward, eclipsed as the sun
that shone:
And the west wind wakes with dawn, and the hope that was here is
gone.

Around they wheel and around, two knots to the Spaniard's one,
The wind-swift warriors of England, who shoot as with shafts of the
sun,
With fourfold shots for the Spaniard's, that spare not till day be
done.

And the wind with the sundown sharpens, and hurtles the ships to
the lee,
And Spaniard on Spaniard smites, and shatters, and yields; and we,
Ere battle begin, stand lords of the battle, acclaimed of the sea.

And the day sweeps round to the nightward; and heavy and hard the
waves
Roll in on the herd of the hurtling galleons; and masters and
slaves
Reel blind in the grasp of the dark strong wind that shall dig
their graves.

For the sepulchres hollowed and shaped of the wind in the swerve of
the seas,
The graves that gape for their pasture, and laugh, thrilled through
by the breeze,
The sweet soft merciless waters, await and are fain of these.

As the hiss of a Python heaving in menace of doom to be
They hear through the clear night round them, whose hours are as
clouds that flee,
The whisper of tempest sleeping, the heave and the hiss of the sea.

But faith is theirs, and with faith are they girded and helmed and
shod:
Invincible are they, almighty, elect for a sword and a rod;
Invincible even as their God is omnipotent, infinite, God.

In him is their