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Lord of our noble English tongue, Who holdest seizin of our speech, Whose epic Mowgli first did reach The valves of all our hearts when young— Master of every grace and ire, Wide as the salt-winged fulmar gulls That circle England's battle hulls, Your songs have fanned the Imperial fire. By Oak and Ash and Thorns, by all Old memories of Sussex sod, To you we pile the altar clod And ask a new Recessional. |
TO A U-BOAT
With Apologies to William Blake
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Tiger, tiger of the seas, King of scarlet butcheries, What infernal hand and eye Planned your dread machinery? Men of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, Watch the gauge and turn the wheel, Proud, perhaps, to have defiled Oceans, to destroy a child. With your thunderbolt you strike Cargo, women, all alike— Stain with red God's clean green sea, Call it "naval victory." U-boat, U-boat, as you grope With your half-blind periscope, Lo, your hateful trail we mark, Send you to your kin, the shark! |
KITCHENER
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No man in England slept, the night he died: The harsh, stern spirit passed without a pang, And freed of mortal clogs his message rang. In every wakeful mind the challenge cried: Think not of me: one servant less or more Means nothing now: hold fast the greater thing— Strike hard, love truth, serve England and the King! Servant of England, soldier to the core, What does it matter where his body fall? What does it matter where they build the tomb? Five million men, from Calais to Khartoum, These are his wreath and his memorial. |