There many a brown-winged kestrel swoops or hovers
In poised and patient quest of his own prey;
And there are fern-clad glens where happy lovers
May kiss the murmuring summer noon away.
There, as the primal earth was—all is glorious
Perfect and wise and wonderful in view
Of that great heaven through which we rise victorious
O'er all that strife and change and death can do.
No nation yet has risen o'er earth's first nature;
Though love illumed each individual mind,
Like some half-blind, half-formed primeval creature
The State still crawled a thousand years behind.
Still on the standards of the great World-Powers
Lion and bear and eagle sullenly brood,
Whether the slow folds flap o'er halcyon hours
Or stream tempestuously o'er fields of blood.
By war's red evolution we have risen
Far, since fierce Erda chose her conquering few,
And out of Death's red gates and Time's grey prison
They burst, elect from battle, tried and true.
But now Death mocks at youth and love and glory,
Chivalry slinks behind his loaded mines,
With meaner murderous lips War tells her story,
And round her cunning brows no laurel shines.
And here to us the eternal charge is given
To rise and make our low world touch God's high:
To hasten God's own kingdom, Man's own heaven,
And teach Love's grander army how to die.
No kingdom then, no long-continuing city
Shall e'er again be stablished by the sword;
No blood-bought throne defy the powers of pity,
No despot's crown outweigh one helot's word.
Imperial England, breathe thy marching orders:
The great host waits; the end, the end is close,
When earth shall know thy peace in all her borders,
And all her deserts blossom with thy Rose.
Princedoms and peoples rise and flash and perish
As the dew passes from the flowering thorn;
Yet the one Kingdom that our dreams still cherish
Lives in a light that blinds the world's red morn.