In Time of War III

The world rolls on; and love and peace are mated:Still on the breast of England, like a star,The blood-red lonely heath blows, consecrated,A brooding practice-ground for blood-red war.

Yet is there nothing out of tune with NatureThere, where the skylark showers his earliest song,Where sun and wind have moulded every feature,And one world-music bears each note along.

There many a brown-winged kestrel swoops or hoversIn poised and patient quest of his own prey;And there are fern-clad glens where happy loversMay kiss the murmuring summer noon away.

There, as the primal earth was--all is gloriousPerfect and wise and wonderful in viewOf that great heaven through which we rise victoriousO'er all that strife and change and death can do.

No nation yet has risen o'er earth's first nature;Though love illumed each individual mind,Like some half-blind, half-formed primeval creatureThe State still crawled a thousand years behind.

Still on the standards of the great World-PowersLion and bear and eagle sullenly brood,Whether the slow folds flap o'er halcyon hoursOr stream tempestuously o'er fields of blood.

By war's red evolution we have risenFar, since fierce Erda chose her conquering few,And out of Death's red gates and Time's grey prisonThey burst, elect from battle, tried and true.

But now Death mocks at youth and love and glory,Chivalry slinks behind his loaded mines,With meaner murderous lips War tells her story,And round her cunning brows no laurel shines.

And here to us the eternal charge is givenTo rise and make our low world touch God's high:To hasten God's own kingdom, Man's own heaven,And teach Love's grander army how to die.

No kingdom then, no long-continuing cityShall e'er again be stablished by the sword;No blood-bought throne defy the powers of pity,No despot's crown outweigh one helot's word.

Imperial England, breathe thy marching orders:The great host waits; the end, the end is close,When earth shall know thy peace in all her borders,And all her deserts blossom with thy Rose.

Princedoms and peoples rise and flash and perishAs the dew passes from the flowering thorn;Yet the one Kingdom that our dreams still cherishLives in a light that blinds the world's red morn.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, the days darken;We would not have thee slacken watch or ward,Nor doff thine armour till the whole world hearken,Nor till Time bid thee lay aside the sword.

Hasten the Kingdom; hamlet, heath, and city,We are all at war, one bleeding bulk of pain;Little we know; but one thing--by God's pity--We know, and know all else on earth is vain.

We know not yet how much we dare, how little;We dare not dream of peace; yet, as at need,England, God help thee, let no jot or tittleOf Love's last law go past thee without heed.

Who saves his life shall lose it! The great agesBear witness--Rome and Babylon and TyreCry from the dust-stopped lips of all their sages,--There is no hope if man can climb no higher.

England, by God's grace set apart to ponderA little while from battle, ah, take heed,Keep watch, keep watch, beside thy sleeping thunder;Call down Christ's pity while those others bleed;

Waken the God within thee, while the sorrowOf battle surges round a distant shore,While Time is thine, lest on some deadly morrowThe moving finger write--but thine no more.

Little we know--but though the advancing æonsWin every painful step by blood and fire,Though tortured mouths must chant the world's great pæans,And martyred souls proclaim the world's desire;

Though war be nature's engine of rejection,Soon, soon, across her universal vergeThe soul of man in sacred insurrectionShall into God's diviner light emerge.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, queen and mother;Little we know of all Time's works and ways;Yet this, this, this is sure: we need none otherKnowledge or wisdom, hope or aim or praise,

But to keep this one stormy banner flyingIn this one faith that none shall e'er disprove,Then drive the embattled world before thee, crying,There is one Emperor, whose name is Love.