Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG OF EMPIRE; JUNE 20, 1887, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF EMPIRE; JUNE 20, 1887, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: First lady of our english race
Last Line: Rejoice to-day, and make our solemn jubilee!!
Subject(s): Great Britain - Commonwealth & Colonies; Victoria, Queen Of England (1819-1901); British Empire; England - Empire


FIRST Lady of our English race,
In Royal dignity and grace
Higher than all in old ancestral blood,
But higher still in love of good,
And care for ordered Freedom, grown
To a great tree where'er
In either hemisphere,
Its vital seeds are blown;
Where'er with every day begun
Thy English bugles greet the coming sun!

Thy life is England's. All these fifty years
Thou from thy lonely Queenly place
Hast watched the clouds and sunshine on her face;
Hast marked her changing hopes and fears;
Her joys and sorrows have been always thine;
Always thy quick and Royal sympathy
Has gone out swiftly to the humblest home,
Wherever grief and pain and suffering come.

Therefore it is that we
Take thee for head and symbol of our name.
For fifty years of reign thou wert the same,
Therefore to-day we make our jubilee.
Firm set on ancient right, as on thy people's love,
Unchecked thy wheels of empire onward move.
Not as theirs is thy throne
Who, though their hapless subjects groan,
Sit selfish, caring not at all,
Until the fierce mob surges and they fall,
Or the assassin sets the down-trod free.
Not such thy fate on this thy jubilee,
But love and reverence in the hearts of all.

Oh England! Empire wide and great
As ever from the shaping hand of fate
Did issue on the earth, august, large grown!
What were the Empires of the past to thine,
The old old Empires ruled by kings divine --
Egypt, Assyria, Rome? What rule was like thine own,
Who over all the round world bearest sway?
Not those alone who thy commands obey
Thy subjects are; but in the boundless West
Our grandsires lost, still is thy reign confest.
"The Queen" they call thee, the young People strong,
Who, being Britons, might not suffer wrong,
But are reknit with us in reverence for thee;
Therefore it is we make our jubilee.

See what a glorious throng they come,
Turned to their ancient home,
The children of our England! See
What vigorous company
Thou sendest, Greater England of the Southern Sea!
Thy stately cities, sown with domes and spires,
Chase the illumined night with festal fires
In honour of their Queen, whose happy reign
Began when, 'mid their central roar,
The naked savage trod the pathless plain.
Thousands of miles, North, South, East, West, to-day,
Their countless herds and flocks unnumbered stray.
Theirs are the vast primaeval forest depths profound;
Yet everywhere are found
The English laws, the English accents fair,
'Mid burning North or cooler Southern air.
A world within themselves, and with them blent
Island with continent.
The green isles, jewels on the tropic blue,
Where flower and tree and bird are strange and new;
Or that which lies within a temperate air
As summer-England fair;
Or those, our Southern Britain that shall be,
Set in the lonely sea.
Lands of deep fiord and snow-clad soaring hill,
Where-through the ocean-currents ebb and fill,
And craters vast, from which the prisoned force
Of the great earth-fires runs its dreadful course.
And vales of fern and palm, whence rising like a dream
High in mid-heaven, the ghostly ice-fields gleam.

And from her far and wintry North
The great Dominion issues forth,
Fit nurse of stalwart British hearts and strong;
From her black pine woods, deep in snow,
Her billowy prairies boundless as the sea,
Where on the sweet untroubled soil
Yearly the unnoticed, countless wild-flowers blow,
And by men's fruitful and compelling toil
Yearly the deep and bounteous harvests grow;
From the lone plains, o'er which the icy wind
Sweeps from the North, leaving the Pole behind;
In whose brief summer suns, so fierce they shine,
Flourish alike the apple and the vine;
From teeming ancient cities bright and fair,
Whether in summer's heat or frosty wintry air,
Stamped with the nameless charm and grace
Of a more joyous race;
Or on the rounding prairie nestling down
Homestead and frequent new-built town.
Even to those ultimate wilds where comes to be
Another Westminster on the Pacific Sea.

Nor shall thy Western Isles
Be wanting, where the high green breakers fall
Upon the torrid shore, and nature smiles;
And yet sometimes broods over all,
Thick woods and hot lagunes with steaming breath,
A nameless presence with a face of death.
Fair balmy Isles, where never wintry air
Ruffles the scentless tropic blossoms fair,
Upon whose sun-warmed fruitful soil
Our father's dusky freedmen toil.
Lands of bright plumes that flash from tree to tree,
Long creepers trailing thick with brilliant bloom,
And loud upon the forest's silent gloom
The plunging surges of the encircling sea.

And from the ancient land
Scorching beneath the strong unfailing sun,
Round thee thy unnumbered subject millions stand;
From many a storied city fair,
Old ere our England, first begun,
From marble tomb and temple white,
Built ere our far forefathers were,
And still a miracle defying Time;
Palaces gray with age and dark with crime,
Fierce superstitions, only quenched in blood,
And sweet flower-fancies yearning towards the light,
And lustral cleansings in the sacred flood,
Where by dim temple cool, or shaded street,
From hill or parched plain the wayworn pilgrims meet.

And from the unhappy Continent
Which breeds the savage and the slave --
From our enormous South, there shall be sent
A scanty band of strong self-governed men.
And from those poisoned swamps, today a grave,
But which one day shall smile with plenty, when
The onward foot of Knowledge, slow, sublime,
Has traversed her and set her children free
From ocean to her fabulous inland sea,
And the fierce savage, full of kingly grace,
Is father of a gentler race,
And peaceful commerce heals the wounds of Time,
And the long history of blood and pain
Comes nevermore again.

And nearer to thee still, and dearer yet,
Thy people of these little Northern Isles,
Who never shall their Queen forget,
Nor be forgotten, whether Fortune smiles
Or armed Europe storm around,
Whom none assail, beyond the waves' deep sound,
Behind their surge-struck ramparts safe and free.
These are thy closest subjects, these
The brain and heart of Empire, as thy Rose
Within its close-ranged petals comes to hold
A perfumed heart of gold,
Wherein the seed of the miraculous flower,
Safe hid, defies Fate's power.
And most of all thy wondrous mothertown
Upon our broad Thames sitting like a crown,
Who, 'mid her healthful labour-laden air,
Grows every day more fair;
Whom not for fairness do her children prize,
But for her gracious homely memories --
A nation, not a city, the loved home
Whereto the longing thoughts of exiled Britons come!

What is it that their voices tell?
What is it that in naming thee they praise?
Not wider empire only; that is well. --
But there are worthier triumphs, peaceful days,
Just laws, a people happier than before,
And rolling on untroubled evermore,
With larger stream, and fuller and more free
The tide of ordered liberty.
These things than empire higher are,
Higher and nobler far.

Our old Draconic Law
With children's blood cemented, no more kills
Its tale of innocent victims. Pitying Love
Amid the abjects deigns to-day to move
Whom no man cared for. If the cruel city
Still claims its thousands, by the outcasts stand
Pure men and women in a gentle band,
Linked in a ministry of Love and Pity.
No more the insensate State
Binds down the worker, to exaggerate
The unequal gifts of Fate,
But comes instead, some care for common good,
Some glimmering sense of growing brotherhood.
No more half deafened by the unresting loom,
Soulless as is the brute, the pallid children pine;
Nor hapless slaves, half naked, 'mid the gloom
And grime and squalor of the sunless mine,
The young girl-workers coarsen, but all take
Some modest gleam of knowledge, which may breed
The faith that is above, yet under, every creed,
And of these humble lives, one day shall make
True citizens indeed.

Nor shall thy peoples' voice
Keep silence of the salutary change
Which brought the gift of fullest freedom down
To humble lives, whether by field or town;
The potent gift, and strange,
Which wakes alone the wider civic sense,
Which, more than knowledge, sobers heart and mind,
And rich and poor in closer ties can bind,
And knits a nation firm in harmony!
Let civil broils and fiercer dissidence
Come -- we are one. What care have we?
In speech, in action, we are free.
No mob law need we fear, or senseless anarchy,
And for all these rejoice.

What law for us has done,
For all our greater England 'neath the sun,
Let us do now, building on high a State
Of half the World confederate!
Sure, 'twere the noblest victory of mind
Thy scattered realms to bind;
To guide the toiling, hopeless feet
To where is work for all, and life is sweet;
To teach our millions their great heritage,
To call together high world-councils sage,
Strong as the Priest's, in this our island-home;
Then, though the armed world shall come,
What care, what fear, have we,
Who, being free, are one; and, being one, are free?

If all the wide Earth brings our millions food,
And if our navies whiten every sea,
If we have rest and wider brotherhood,
All these began with thee;
And shall, if Heaven so will, still more increase
With thy remaining years, till blessed Peace,
Half frighted from us now by grave alarms
Of half a world in arms,
Shall brood, a white-winged Angel, o'er the Earth.
Then may the rule of Wrong be done!
Then may a new and Glorious Sun
Gild the illumined World! and then
Come Righteousness to men!

Three sovereigns of our English line
Have reached thy length of rule, each of his name the third,
But never England's heart was stirred
By those as 'tis by thine.
Our Henry died lonely and girt with foes;
Our greater Edward fell in dotage ere life's close;
And he thy grandsire knew a troublous time,
A dim pathetic figure! full of pain
And care too great for mortal to sustain,
And in his rayless sorrow grown sublime!

Three Queens have swayed
Our England's fortunes -- great Elizabeth.
In whose brave times the blast of war
Blew loud and fierce and far.
Her dauntless sailors dared the unbounded West,
And fought the Armada's might, and did prevail,
And wheresoe'er was seen an English sail
Her Empire was confest;
And round her gracious throne immortal flowers of song
Bloomed beautiful, bloomed long,
And left our English tongue as sweet as it was strong.

And when a century and more had passed
In blood and turmoil, came a Queen at last.
Her soldiers and her sailors once again
Conquered on tented field and on the main,
And once more rose the choir of song;
Not as the Elizabethan, deep and strong,
But, tripping lightly on its jewelled feet,
Issued politely sweet,
And Shakespeare's tongue and Milton's learned to dance
The minuet of France.

And now again once more
A Queen reigns o'er us as before;
Again by land and sea
We cast the chequered sum of victory.
Once more our English tongue
Wakes to unnumbered bursts of song.
A great choir lifts again its accents fair,
And to those greater singers, if we find
To-day no answering mind,
'Tis that too large the Present fills the view,
Yet has its great names too.
Part of the glorious fellowship are we,
The great Victorian company,
Which, since old Caedmon's deep voice carolled strong,
Through England's chequered story bore along
The high pure fire of the world's sweetest song.

But not in the increase
Of Empire, or the victories of peace,
Chiefly we seek thy praise.
But that thy long and gracious days,
Lived in the solitude that hems a throne,
Since thy great sorrow came and left thee lone,
Were ever white, and free from thought of blame.
Not once in thy long years shadow of envy came
On thee, or him, whose stainiess manhood bore
Thy love's unfading flower. Never before
In all our England was a royal home
Whereto the loving thoughts of humble hearts might come.
Thy children's children stand around thy knees,
Their children come in turn as fair as these;
Thy people and thy children turn to thee,
Knit all in one by bonds of sympathy
With thee, our Queen, are we;
Therefore we make our solemn jubilee!

Flash, festal fires, high on the joyous air!
Clash, joy-bells! joy-guns, roar! and, jubilant trumpets, blare!
Let the great noise of our rejoicing rise!
Gleam, long-illumined cities, to the skies
Round all the earth, in every clime,
So far your distance half confuses time!
As in the old Judaean history,
Fling wide the doors and set the prisoners free!
Wherever England is o'er all the world,
Fly, banner of Royal England, stream unfurled!
The proudest Empire that has been, to-day
Rejoices and makes solemn jubilee.
For England! England! we our voices raise!
Our England! England! England! in our Queen we praise!
We love not war, but only peace,
Yet never shall our England's power decrease!
Whoever guides our helm of State,
Let all men know it, England shall be great!
We hold a vaster Empire than has been!
Nigh half the race of man is subject to our Queen!
Nigh half the wide, wide earth is ours in fee!
And where her rule comes, all are free.
And therefore 'tis, oh Queen, that we,
Knit fast in bonds of temperate liberty,
Rejoice to-day, and make our solemn jubilee!!





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