On thy dear countenance, great mother-land,
Age after age thy sons have set their sign,
Moulding the features with successive hand
Not always sedulous of beauty’s line:—
Yet here Man’s art in one harmonious aim
With Nature’s gentle moulding, oft has work’d
The perfect whole to frame:
Nor does earth’s labour’d face elsewhere, like thee,
Give back her children’s heart with such full sympathy
3
—On marshland rough and self-sprung forest gazed
The imperial Roman of the eagle-eye;
Log-splinter’d forts on green hill-summits raised,
Earth huts and rings that dot the chalk-downs high:—
Dark rites of hidden faith in grove and moor;
Idols of monstrous build; wheel’d scythes of war;
Rock tombs and pillars hoar:
Strange races, Finn, Iberian, Belgae, Celt;
While in the wolds huge bulls and antler’d giants dwelt.
4
—Another age!—The spell of Rome has past
Transforming all our Britain; Ruthless plough,
Which plough’d the world, yet o’er the nations cast
The seed of arts, and law, and all that now
Has ripen’d into commonwealths:—Her hand
With network mile-paths binding plain and hill
Arterialized the land:
The thicket yields: the soil for use is clear;
Peace with her plastic touch,—field, farm, and grange are here.
5
Lo, flintwall’d cities, castles stark and square
Bastion’d with rocks that rival Nature’s own;
Red-furnaced baths, trim gardens planted fair
With tree and flower the North ne’er yet had known;
Long temple-roofs and statues poised on high
With golden wings outstretch’d for tiptoe flight,
Quivering in summer sky:—
The land had rest, while those stern legions lay
By northern ramparts camp’d, and held the Pict at bay.
6
Imperious Empire! Thrice-majestic Rome!
No later age, as earth’s slow centuries glide,
Can raze the footprints stamp’d where thou hast come,
The ne’er-repeated grandeur of thy stride!
—Though now so dense a darkness takes the land,
Law, peace, wealth, letters, faith,—all lights are quench’d