valiant, wonderful piece of earth, To which the assembling nations bare the head, And bend the knee, In absolute veneration—once your Queen. England England’s England’s England’s Sceptre and orb and crown, High ensigns of a sovranty empaling The glory and love and praise of a whole half-world, Fall from her, and, preceding, she departs Into the old, indissoluble Peace. p. 110EPILOGUE p. 110 Into a land Storm-wrought, a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred, Helpless, degraded, desolate, Peace, the White Angel, comes. Her eyes are as a mother’s. Her good hands Are comforting, and helping; and her voice Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring Falls on the World, and there is no more pain. And, in her influence, hope returns, and life, And the passion of endeavour: so that, soon, The idle ports are insolent with keels; The stithies roar, and the mills thrum With energy and achievement; weald and wold Exult; the cottage-garden teems With innocent hues and odours; boy and girl Mate prosperously; there are sweet women to kiss; There are good women to breed. In a golden fog, p. 111A large, full-stomached faith in kindliness All over the world, the nation, in a dream Of money and love and sport, hangs at the paps Of well-being, and so Goes fattening, mellowing, dozing, rotting down Into a rich deliquium of decay. p. 111 Then, if the Gods be good, Then, if the Gods be other than mischievous, Down from their footstools, down With a million-throated shouting, swoops and storms War, the Red Angel, the Awakener, The Shaker of Souls and Thrones; and at her heel Trail grief, and ruin, and shame! The woman weeps her man, the mother her son, The tenderling its father. In wild hours, A people, haggard with defeat, Asks if there be a God; yet sets its teeth, Faces calamity, and goes into the fire Another than it was. And in wild hours A people, roaring ripe With victory, rises, menaces, stands renewed, Sheds its old piddling aims, p. 112Approves its virtue, puts behind itself The comfortable dream, and goes, Armoured
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