This was first published anonymously and one reader, at least, instantly detected her hand. It took no special acumen. Lines were never written more intensely charged with personal quality.
And if we think her heart, in its love for England, ever grew alien to us, we may go back to the last of the twelve stately London Sonnets: In the Docks. What a banner she waved there of an implied creed, a passionate belief!
“Where the bales thunder till the day is done,
And the wild sounds with wilder odors cope;
Where over crouching sail and coiling rope,
Lascar and Moor along the gangway run;
Where stifled Thames spreads in the pallid sun,
A hive of anarchy from slope to slope;
Flag of my birth, my liberty, my hope,
I see thee at the masthead, joyous one!