Ii

A desolate shore, The sinister seduction of the Moon, The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.

Flaunting, tawdry and grim, From cloud to cloud along her beat, Leering her battered and inveterate leer, She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, Her horrible old man, Mumbling old oaths and warming His villainous old bones with villainous talk-- The secrets of their grisly housekeeping Since they went out upon the pad In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: Growling, obscene and hoarse, Tales of unnumbered Ships, Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance In some vile alley of the night Waylaid and bludgeoned-- Dead.

Deep cellared in primeval ooze, Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, They lie where the lean water-worm Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, Thus fouled and desecrate, The summons of the Trumpet, and the while These Twain, their murderers, Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, Hang at the heels of their children--She aloft As in the shining streets, He as in ambush at some fetid stair.

The stalwart Ships, The beautiful and bold adventurers! Stationed out yonder in the isle, The tall Policeman, Flashing his bull's-eye, as he peers About him in the ancient vacancy, Tells them this way is safety--this way home.

III (To R. F. B.)

We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;

Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.

East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.

Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease-- (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)--

Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.

Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark; Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;

We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones; The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;

Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of the northern night;

And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound, Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round;

And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze, Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;

And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers, And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers!

Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die, While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?

For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father's debt, And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set:

And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave, Is but less strong than Time and the all-devouring Grave.