Lyall.
[CXVI]
THE OBLATION
Ask nothing more of me, sweet; All I can give you I give. Heart of my heart, were it more, More would be laid at your feet: Love that should help you to live, Song that should spur you to soar.
All things were nothing to give Once to have sense of you more, Touch you and taste of you, sweet, Think you and breathe you and live, Swept of your wings as they soar, Trodden by chance of your feet.
I that have love and no more Give you but love of you, sweet: He that hath more, let him give; He that hath wings, let him soar; Mine is the heart at your feet Here, that must love you to live.
Swinburne.
[CXVII]
ENGLAND
England, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round, Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found? Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned. Time may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason, and fraud, and fear: Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from far and near: Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from year to year.
Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame and smite, We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of night, We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in light.
Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not by eyeless foes: Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows: Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows. Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth: Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth: Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent's tooth.