HIS MEAD
So, Masefield, have your royal words once more
Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due;
Your great elegiac, tragically true,
Must leave all Britain prouder than before;
And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore,
And all that anguished consciences must rue,
One arrowed gladness surely pierces through
From London’s centre to Canadian shore:
When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli,
When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke
And all the splendid Youth her error took
As hostage from the fields of daffodils,
Let this a present, living solace be:
You are not sleeping in those cruel hills!
AMY BRIDGEMAN
1620-1920
Before him rolls the dark, relentless ocean;
Behind him stretch the cold and barren sands;
Wrapt in the mantle of his deep devotion
The Pilgrim kneels, and clasps his lifted hands;
“God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us
Through seas and sorrows, famine, fire, and sword;
Who, in Thy mercies manifold hast taught us
To trust in Thee, our leader and our Lord;
“God, who hast send Thy truth to shine before us,
A fiery pillar, beaconing on the sea;
God, who hast spread thy wings of mercy o’er us;
God, who hast set our children’s children free,
“Freedom Thy new-born nation here shall cherish;
Grant us Thy covenant, changing, sure:
Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish;
Freedom and Truth, immortal shall endure.”
Face to the Indian arrows.
Face to the Prussian guns,
From then till now the Pilgrim’s vow
Has held the Pilgrim’s sons.
He braved the red man’s ambush,
He loosed the black man’s chain;
His spirit broke King George’s yoke
And the battleships of Spain.
He crossed the seething ocean;
He dared the death-strewn track;
He charged in the hell of Saint Mihiel
And hurled the tyrant back.
For the voice of the lonely Pilgrim
Who knelt upon the strand
A people hears three hundred years
In the conscience of the land.
Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage,
Conscience, all hail!
Heart of New England, strength of the Pilgrims,
Thou shalt prevail.
Look how the empires rise and fall!
Athens robed in her learning and beauty,
Rome in her royal lust for power—
Each has flourished for her little hour,
Risen and fallen and ceased to be.
What of her by the Western Sea,
Born and bred as the child of Duty,
Sternest of them all?
She it is and she alone
Who built on faith as her corner stone;
Of all the nations none but she
Knew that the truth shall make us free.
Daughter of Courage, mother of heros,
Freedom divine.
Light of New England, Star of the Pilgrim,
Still shalt thou shine.