But O gin I were there again,
Afar ayont the faem,
Cauld and dead in the sweet, saft bed
That haps my sires at hame!
We’ll see nae mair the sea-banks fair,
And the sweet grey gleaming sky,
And the lordly strand of Northumberland,
And the goodly towers thereby;
And none shall know but the winds that blow
The graves wherein we lie.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
XCVI
NEW YEAR’S DAY
New Year, be good to England. Bid her name
Shine sunlike as of old on all the sea:
Make strong her soul: set all her spirit free:
Bind fast her home-born foes with links of shame
More strong than iron and more keen than flame:
Seal up their lips for shame’s sake: so shall she
Who was the light that lightened freedom be,
For all false tongues, in all men’s eyes the same.
O last-born child of Time, earth’s eldest lord,
God undiscrowned of godhead, who for man
Begets all good and evil things that live,
Do thou, his new-begotten son, implored
Of hearts that hope and fear not, make thy span
Bright with such light as history bids thee give.
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
XCVII
TO WILLIAM MORRIS
Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture
And sense of the radiance of yore,
Fulfilled you with power to recapture
What never might singer before—
The life, the delight, and the sorrow
Of troublous and chivalrous years
That knew not of night or of morrow,
Of hopes or of fears.