Love that led thee alive, and fed thy soul with sorrows and joys and fears,

Love that sped thee, alive and dead, to fame's fair goal with thy peerless peers,

Feeds the flame of thy quenchless name with light that lightens the rayless years.

Dark as sorrow though night and morrow may lower with presage of clouded fame,

How may she that of old bare thee, may Sidney's England, be brought to shame?

How should this be, while England is? What need of answer beyond thy name?

III

From the love that transfigures thy glory,

From the light of the dawn of thy death,

The life of thy song and thy story

Took subtler and fierier breath.

[Pg 125]

And we, though the day and the morrow

Set fear and thanksgiving at strife,

Hail yet in the star of thy sorrow

The sun of thy life.

Shame and fear may beset men here, and bid thanksgiving and pride be dumb:

Faith, discrowned of her praise, and wound about with toils till her life wax numb,

Scarce may see if the sundawn be, if darkness die not and dayrise come.

But England, enmeshed and benetted

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