beloved, none other could claim in place of thee
England's place:
Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed
with grace:
Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as fair
of face.

How shalt thou be abased? or how shall fear take hold of thy heart?
of thine,
England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes
divine?
Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her
darkness shine.

England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy
glory, free,
Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he
worships thee;
None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it
hails the sea.

TO A SEAMEW

When I had wings, my brother,
Such wings were mine as thine:
Such life my heart remembers
In all as wild Septembers
As this when life seems other,
Though sweet, than once was mine;
When I had wings, my brother,
Such wings were mine as thine.

Such life as thrills and quickens
The silence of thy flight,
Or fills thy note's elation
With lordlier exultation
Than man's, whose faint heart sickens
With hopes and fears that blight
Such life as thrills and quickens
The silence of thy flight.

Thy cry from windward clanging
Makes all the cliffs rejoice;
Though storm clothe seas with sorrow,
Thy call salutes the morrow;
While shades of pain seem hanging
Round earth's most rapturous voice,
Thy cry from windward clanging
Makes all the cliffs rejoice.

We, sons and sires of seamen,
Whose home is all the sea,
What place man may, we claim it;
But thine--whose thought may name it?
Free birds live higher than freemen,
And gladlier ye than we--
We, sons and sires of seamen,
Whose home is all the sea.

For you the storm sounds only
More notes of more delight
Than earth's in sunniest weather:
When heaven and sea together
Join strengths against the lonely
Lost bark borne down by night,
For you the storm sounds only
More notes of more delight.

With wider wing, and louder
Long clarion-call of joy,
Thy tribe salutes th