V
Hasten the Kingdom, England;
Look up across the narrow seas,
Across the great white nations to thy dark imperial throne
Where now three hundred million souls attend on thine august decrees;
Ah, bow thine head in humbleness, the Kingdom is thine own:
Not for the pride or power
God gave thee this in dower;
But, now the West and East have met and wept their mortal loss,
Now that their tears have spoken
And the long dumb spell is broken,
Is it nothing that thy banner bears the red eternal cross?
VI
Ay! Lift the flag of England;
And lo, that Eastern cross is there,
Veiled with a hundred meanings as our English eyes are veiled;
Yet to the grander dawn we move oblivious of the sign we bear,
Oblivious of the heights we climb until the last be scaled;
Then with all the earth before us
And the great cross floating o'er us
We shall break the sword we forged of old, so weak we were and blind;
While the inviolate heaven discloses
England's Rose of all the roses
Dawning wide and ever wider o'er the kingdom of mankind.
VII
Hasten the Kingdom, England;
For then all nations shall be one;
One as the ordered stars are one that sing upon their way,
One with the rhythmic glories of the swinging sea and the rolling sun,
One with the flow of life and death, the tides of night and day;
One with all dreams of beauty,
One with all laws of duty;
One with the weak and helpless while the one sky burns above;
Till eyes by tears made glorious
Look up at last victorious,
And lips that starved break open in one song of life and love.
VIII
Hasten the Kingdom, England;
And when the Spring returns again
Rekindle in our English hearts the universal Spring,
That we may wait in faith upon the former and the latter rain,
Till all waste places burgeon and the wildernesses sing;
Pour the glory of thy pity
Through the dark and troubled city;
Pour the splendour of thy beauty over wood and meadow fair;
May the God of battles guide thee
And the Christ-child walk beside thee
With a word of peace for England in the dawn of Nelson's Year.