constancy have I sustained and urged The work it was my duty to advance. For, when my vision cleared again, I looked And saw how mean a thing was man, who used The produce of his fellows’ energies And gave back nothing.

Then my spirit saw This Island race two thousand years ago In simple savagery, controlled by priests p. 151More fell and bloody than the wolves that howled At midnight round their monstrous altar-stones, Scenting the sacrificial human blood. Saw girt with legions lynx-eyed Cæsar come To taste of Briton’s valour. When appeared Legions succeeding legions, and the swarms Marshalled by skilful discipline had fallen To tributaries of all-conquering Rome. Saw when Rome’s grip, through fierce luxurious guilt, Could hold no longer; and with tattered plume Her eagles left her slaves to stem or tide The hungry Pict incursions as they could. Next when a burly genial race here raised The White Horse Standard: men who wrought the soil Till yellow corn, responsive, sunned the plains. When, lured by booty, Ravens from the North Bent hitherward: stiffly the contest tugged Long years; till both the wearied champions joined p. 152Their hands, as common home to share the Isle. With peace the land grew fat; and wholesome bonds Of nobles to their kings, and serfs to them, Fell slackened or distorted to misrule; When Norman William, hard as rocks and fierce As fire, with charge of mailèd horse and showers Of steel, won England. Her rough sons he drilled Grimly: by stern command and strength of sword He forced obedience where he fixed a law. For ages long against men’s stubborn minds, With give and take, the bold Plantagenets Kept up the drill. At length the race, now grown By constant wrestle into thews of power, Moved calm with strength beneath the Tudor’s sway. And then a Northern Stuart wore their crown, Whose son, unmindful he was over men Truth-lovers, lied to them and lost his head; For Puritans held no respect for lies. p. 153Next flared Charles Satyr’s saturnalia Of Lely Nymphs, who panting sang “More gold; We yield our beauties freely; gold, more gold.” Hapless explosions, folly, frenzied plots; Till well coerced by Lowland William’s craft. Then plans that led to nought, or worse, enforced By Marlborough’s cannon thundering over-seas. Then through the Guelphic line; our race now grows To that great power which is to sway the world.

p. 151

p. 152

p. 153

Down from those human shambles, wolf-belapt, To when, in pardonably grand excess Of pity, through our people’s will was bought Free indolence for Isles of Western 

 Prev. P 40/51 next