Exordium

When on the highest ridge of that strange land,Under the cloudless blinding tropic blue,Drake and his band of swarthy seamen stoodWith dazed eyes gazing round them, emerald fansOf palm that fell like fountains over cliffsOf gorgeous red anana bloom obscuredTheir sight on every side. Illustrious gleamsOf rose and green and gold streamed from the plumesThat flashed like living rainbows through the glades.Piratic glints of musketoon and sword,The scarlet scarves around the tawny throats,The bright gold ear-rings in the sun-black ears,And the calm faces of the negro guidesOpposed their barbarous bravery to the noon;Yet a deep silence dreadfully besiegedEven those mighty hearts upon the vergeOf the undiscovered world. Behind them layThe old earth they knew. In front they could not seeWhat lay beyond the ridge. Only they heardCries of the painted birds troubling the heatAnd shivering through the woods; till Francis DrakePlunged through the hush, took hold upon a tree,The tallest near them, and clomb upward, branchBy branch.And there, as he swung clear aboveThe steep-down forest, on his wondering eyes,Mile upon mile of rugged shimmering gold,Burst the unknown immeasurable sea.Then he descended; and with a new voiceVowed that, God helping, he would one day ploughThose virgin waters with an English keel.

So here before the unattempted task,Above the Golden Ocean of my dreamI clomb and saw in splendid pageant passThe wild adventures and heroic deedsOf England's epic age, a vision litWith mighty prophecies, fraught with a doomWorthy the great Homeric roll of song,Yet all unsung and unrecorded quiteBy those who might have touched with Raphael's handThe large imperial legend of our race,Ere it brought forth the braggarts of an hour,Self-worshippers who love their imaged strength,And as a symbol for their own proud selvesMisuse the sacred name of this dear land,While England to the Empire of her soulLike some great Prophet passes through the crowdThat cannot understand; for he must climbUp to that sovran thunder-smitten peakWhere he shall grave and trench on adamantThe Law that God shall utter by the stillSmall voice, not by the whirlwind or the fire.There labouring for the Highest in himselfHe shall achieve the good of all mankind;And from that lonely Sinai shall returnTriumphant o'er the little gods of goldThat rule their little hour upon the plain.

Oh, thou blind master of these opened eyesBe near me, therefore, now; for not in prideI lift lame hands to this imperious theme;But yearning to a power above mine ownEven as a man might lift his hands in prayer.Or as a child, perchance, in those dark daysWhen London lay beleaguered and the axeFlashed out for a bigot empire; and the bloodOf martyrs made a purple path for SpainUp to the throne of Mary; as a childGathering with friends upon a winter's mornFor some mock fight between the hateful princePhilip and Thomas Wyatt, all at onceMight see in gorgeous ruffs embastionedPopinjay plumes and slouching hats of Spain,Gay shimmering silks and rich encrusted gems,Gold collars, rare brocades, and sleek trunk-hoseThe Ambassador and peacock courtiers comeStrutting along the white snow-strangled street,A walking plot of scarlet Spanish flowers,And with one cry a hundred boyish handsPut them to flight with snowballs, while the windAll round their Spanish ears hissed like a flightOf white-winged geese; so may I wage perchanceA mimic war with all my heart in it,Munitioned with mere perishable snowWhich mightier hands one day will urge with steel.Yet may they still remember me as IRemember, with one little laugh of love,That child's game, this were wealth enough for me.

Mother and love, fair England, hear my prayer;Help me that I may tell the enduring taleOf that great seaman, good at need, who firstSailed round this globe and made one little isle,One little isle against that huge EmpireOf Spain whose might was paramount on earth,O'ertopping Babylon, Nineveh, Greece, and Rome,Carthage and all huge Empires of the past,He made this little isle, against the world,Queen of the earth and sea. Nor this aloneThe theme; for, in a mightier strife engagedEven than he knew, he fought for the new faiths,Championing our manhood as it roseAnd cast its feudal chains before the seatOf kings; nay, in a mightier battle yetHe fought for the soul's freedom, fought the fightWhich, though it still rings in our wondering ears,Was won then and for ever--that great war,That last Crusade of Christ against His priests,Wherein Spain fell behind a thunderous roarOf ocean triumph over burning shipsAnd shattered fleets, while England, England rose,Her white cliffs laughing out across the waves,Victorious over all her enemies.

And while he won the world for her domain,Her loins brought forth, her fostering bosom fedSouls that have swept the spiritual seasFrom heaven to hell, and justified her crown.For round the throne of great ElizabethSpenser and Burleigh, Sidney and Verulam,Clustered like stars, rare Jonson like the crownOf Cassiopeia, Marlowe ruddy as Mars,And over all those mighty hearts aroseThe soul of Shakespeare brooding far and wideBeyond our small horizons, like a lightThrown from a vaster sun that still illumesTracts which the arc of our increasing dayMust still leave undiscovered, unexplored.

Mother and love, fair England, hear my prayer,As thou didst touch the heart and light the flameOf wonder in those eyes which first awokeTo beauty and the sea's adventurous dreamThree hundred years ago, three hundred years,And five long decades, in the leafy lanesOf Devon, where the tallest trees that boreThe raven's matted nest had yielded upTheir booty, while the perilous branches swayedBeneath the boyish privateer, the kingOf many young companions, Francis Drake;So hear me, and so help, for more than hisMy need is, even than when he first set sailUpon that wild adventure with three shipsAnd three-score men from grey old Plymouth Sound,Not knowing if he went to life or death,Not caring greatly, so that he were trueTo his own sleepless and unfaltering soulWhich could not choose but hear the ringing callAcross the splendours of the Spanish MainFrom ever fading, ever new horizons,And shores beyond the sunset and the sea.

Mother and sweetheart, England; from whose breast,With all the world before them, they went forth,Thy seamen, o'er the wide uncharted waste,Wider than that Ulysses roamed of old,Even as the wine-dark MediterraneanIs wider than some wave-relinquished poolAmong its rocks, yet none the less exploredTo greater ends than all the pride of GreeceAnd pomp of Rome achieved; if my poor songNow spread too wide a sail, forgive thy sonAnd lover, for thy love was ever wontTo lift men up in pride above themselvesTo do great deeds which of themselves aloneThey could not; thou hast led the unfaltering feetOf even thy meanest heroes down to death,Lifted poor knights to many a great emprise,Taught them high thoughts, and though they kept their soulsLowly as little children, bidden them liftEyes unappalled by all the myriad starsThat wheel around the great white throne of God.