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Of flag and flower and hanging, shadowy showOf the to-morrow's glories, as might suitA pageant of the dead; and spectral bruitI heard, where stood the dead to watch the dead,The long Victorian line that passed with printless tread.First went the holy poets, two on two,And music, sown along the hardened ground,Budded like frequence of glad daisies, whereThose sacred feet did fare;Arcadian pipe, and psaltery, around,And stringed viol, soundTo make for them melodious due.In the first twain of those great ranks of deathWent one, the impress recent on his hairWhere it was dinted by the laureate wreath:Who sang those goddesses with splendours bareOn Ida hill, before the Trojan boy;And many a lovely lay,Where Beauty did her beauties unarrayIn conscious song. I saw young Love his plumes deploy,And shake their shivering lustres, till the nightWas sprinkled and bedropt with starry playOf versicoloured light,To see that poet pass who sang him well;And I could hear his heartThrob like the after-vibrance of a bell.A Strength beside this Beauty, Browning went,With shrewd looks and intent,And meditating still some gnarled theme.Then came, somewhat apart,In a fastidious dream,Arnold, with a half-discontented calm,Binding up wounds, but pouring in no balm.The fervid breathing of ElizabethBroke on Christina's gentle-taken breath.Rossetti, whose heart stirred within his breastLike lightning in a cloud, a spirit without rest,Came on disranked; Song's hand was in his hair,Lest Art should have withdrawn him from the band,Save for her strong command;And in his eyes high Sadness made its lair.Last came a shadow tall, with drooping lid,Which yet not hidThe steel-like flashing of his armed glance;Alone he did advance,And all the throngs gave roomFor one that looked with such a captain's mien:A scornful smile lay keenOn lips that, living, prophesied of doom.His one hand held a lightning-bolt, the otherA cup of milk and honey blent with fire;It seemed as in that quireHe had not, nor desired not, any brother.A space his alien eye surveyed the prideOf meditated pomp, as one that muchDisdained the sight, methought; then at a touch,He turned the heel, and sought with shadowy strideHis station in the dim,Where the sole-thoughted Dante waited him.
What throngs illustrious next, of Art and Prose,Too long to tell; but other music roseWhen came the sabre's children: they who ledThe iron-throated harmonies of war,The march resounding of the armed line,And measured movement of battalia:Accompanied their treadNo harps, no pipes of soft Arcadia,But--borne to me afar--The tramp of squadrons, and the bursting mine,The shock of steel, the volleying rifle-crack,And echoes out of ancient battles dead.So Cawnpore unto Alma thundered back,And Delhi's cannon roared to Gujerat:Carnage through all those iron vents gave outHer thousand-mouthed shout.As balefire answering balefire is unfurled,From mountain-peaks, to tell the foe's approaches,So ran that battle-clangour round the world,From famous field to fieldSo that reverberated war was tossed;And--in the distance lost--Across the plains of France and hills of SpainIt swelled once more to birth,And broke on me again,The voice of England's glories girdling in the earth.
It caught like fire the main,Where rending planks were heard, and broadsides pealed,That shook were all the seas,Which feared, and thought on Nelson. For with themThat struck the Russ, that brake the Mutineer,And smote the stiff Sikh to his knee,--with theseCame they that kept our England's sea-swept hem,And held afar from her the foreign fear.After them cameThey who pushed back the ocean of the Unknown,And fenced some strand of knowledge for our ownAgainst the outgoing seaOf ebbing mystery;And on their banner "Science" blazoned shone.The rear were they that wore the statesman's fame,From Melbourne, toThe arcane face of the much-wrinkled Jew.
Lo, in this day we keep the yesterdays,And those great dead of the Victorian line.They passed, they passed, but cannot pass away,For England feels them in her blood like wine.She was their mother, and she is their daughter,This Lady of the water,And from their loins she draws the greatness which they were.And still their wisdom sways,Their power lives in her.Their thews it is, England, that lift thy sword,They are the splendour, England, in thy song,They sit unbidden at thy council-board,Their fame doth compass all thy coasts from wrong,And in thy sinews they are strong.Their absence is a presence and a guestIn this day's feast;This living feast is also of the dead,And this, O England, is thine All Souls' Day.And when thy cities flake the night with flames,Thy proudest torches yet shall be their names.
O royal England! happy childOf such a more than regal line;Be it saidFair right of jubilee is thine;And surely thou art unbeguiledIf thou keep with mirth and play,With dance, and jollity, and praise,Such a To-day which sums such Yesterdays.Pour to the joyless ones thy joy, thy oilAnd wine to such as faint and toil.And let thy vales make haste to be more greenThan any vales are seenIn less auspicious lands,And let thy trees clap all their leafy hands,And let thy flowers be gladder far of hueThan flowers of other regions may;Let the rose, with her fragrance sweetened through,Flush as young maidens do,With their own inward blissfulness at play.And let the sky twinkle an eagerer blueOver our English isleThan any otherwhere;Till strangers shall behold, and own that she is fair.Play up, play up, ye birds of minstrel June,Play up your reel, play up your giddiest spring,And trouble every tree with lusty tune,Whereto our hearts shall danceFor overmuch pleasance,And children's running make the earth to sing.And ye soft winds, and ye white-fingered beams,Aid ye her to invest,Our queenly England, in all circumstanceOf fair and feat adorning to be drest;Kirtled in jocund green,Which does befit a Queen,And like our spirits cast forth lively gleams:And let her robe be goodly garlandedWith store of florets white and florets red,With store of florets white and florets gold,A fair thing to behold;Intrailed with the white blossom and the blue,A seemly thing to view!And thereunto,Set over all a woof of lawny air,From her head wavering to her sea-shod feet,Which shall her lovely beauty well complete,And grace her much to wear.
Lo, she is dressed, and lo, she cometh forth,Our stately Lady of the North;Lo, how she doth advance,In her most sovereign eye regard of puissance,And tiar'd with conquest her prevailing brow,While nations to her bow.Come hither, proud and ancient East,Gather ye to this Lady of the North,And sit down with her at her solemn feast,Upon this culminant day of all her days;For ye have heard the thunder of her goings-forth,And wonder of her large imperial ways.Let India send her turbans, and JapanHer pictured vests from that remotest isleSeated in the antechambers of the Sun:And let her Western sisters for a whileRemit long envy and disunion,And take in peaceHer hand behind the buckler of her seas,'Gainst which their wrath has splintered; come, for sheHer hand ungauntlets in mild amity.Victoria! Queen, whose name is victory,Whose woman's nature sorteth best with peace,Bid thou the cloud of war to ceaseWhich ever round thy wide-girt emperyFumes, like to smoke about a burning brand,Telling the energies which keep withinThe light unquenched, as England's light shall be;And let this day hear only peaceful din.For, queenly woman, thou art more than woman;Thy name the often-struck barbarian shuns;Thou art the fear of England to her foemen,The love of England to her sons.And this thy glorious day is England's; whoCan separate the two?She joys thy joys and weeps thy tears,And she is one with all thy moods;Thy story is the tale of England's years,And big with all her ills, and all her stately goods.Now unto theeThe plenitude of the glories thou didst sowIs garnered up in prosperous memory;And, for the perfect evening of thy day,An untumultuous bliss, serenely gay,Sweetened with silence of the after-glow.
Nor does the joyous shoutWhich all our lips give outJar on that quietude; more than may doA radiant childish crew,With well-accordant discord fretting the soft hour,Whose hair is yellowed by the sinking blazeOver a low-mouthed sea. Exult, yet be not twirled,England, by gusts of mereBlind and insensate lightness; neither fearThe vastness of thy shadow on the world.If in the EastStill strains against its leash the unglutted beastOf War; if yet the cannon's lip be warm;Thou, whom these portents warn but not alarm,Feastest, but with thy hand upon the sword,As fits a warrior race.Not like the Saxon fools of olden days,With the mead dripping from the hairy mouth,While all the SouthFilled with the shaven faces of the Norman horde.
