Truth, winged and enkindled with rapture And sense of the radiance of yore, Fulfilled you with power to recapture What never might singer before-- The life, the delight, and the sorrow Of troublous and chivalrous years That knew not of night or of morrow, Of hopes or of fears. But wider the wing and the vision That quicken the spirit have spread Since memory beheld with derision Man's hope to be more than his dead. From the mists and the snows and the thunders Your spirit has brought for us forth Light, music, and joy in the wonders And charms of the north. The wars and the woes and the glories That quicken and lighten and rain From the clouds of its chronicled stories, The passion, the pride, and the pain, Whose echoes were mute and the token Was lost of the spells that they spake, Rise bright at your bidding, unbroken Of ages that break. For you, and for none of us other, Time is not: the dead that must live Hold commune with you as a brother By grace of the life that you give. The heart that was in them is in you, Their soul in your spirit endures: The strength of their song is the sinew Of this that is yours. Hence is it that life, everlasting As light and as music, abides In the sound of the surge of it, casting Sound back to the surge of the tides, Till sons of the sons of the Norsemen Watch, hurtling to windward and lee, Round England, unbacked of her horsemen, The steeds of the sea.