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Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III — John Shaqi

Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. IIISwinburne, Algernon Charles

General

Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III

Name: Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III
Author: Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Poetry

With just and sacred jubilation
       Let earth sound answer to the sea
       For witness, blown on winds as free,
     How England, how her crowning nation,
       Acclaims this jubilee.




     THE ARMADA

     1588: 1888


     I

     I

     England, mother born of seamen, daughter fostered of the sea,
     Mother more beloved than all who bear not all their children free,
       Reared and nursed and crowned and cherished by the sea-wind and
           the sun,
       Sweetest land and strongest, face most fair and mightiest heart
           in one,
     Stands not higher than when the centuries known of earth were less
           by three,
       When the strength that struck the whole world pale fell back from
           hers undone.

     II

     At her feet were the heads of her foes bowed down, and the
           strengths of the storm of them stayed,
     And the hearts that were touched not with mercy with terror were
           touched and amazed and affrayed:
       Yea, hearts that had never been molten with pity were molten with
           fear as with flame,
     And the priests of the Godhead whose temple is hell, and his heart
           is of iron and fire,
     And the swordsmen that served and the seamen that sped them, whom
           peril could tame not or tire,
       Were as foam on the winds of the waters of England which tempest
           can tire not or tame.

     III

     They were girded about with thunder, and lightning came forth of
           the rage of their strength,
     And the measure that measures the wings of the storm was the
           breadth of their force and the length:
     And the name of their might was Invincible, covered and clothed
           with the terror of God;
     With his wrath were they winged, with his love were they fired,
           with the speed of his winds were they shod;
     With his soul were they filled, in his trust were they comforted:
           grace was upon them as night,
     And faith as the blackness of darkness: the fume of their balefires
           was fair in his sight,
     The reek of them sweet as a savour of myrrh in his nostrils: the
           world that he made,
     Theirs was it by gift of his servants: the wind, if they spake in
           his name, was afraid,
     And the sun was a shadow before it, the stars were astonished with
           fear of it: fire
     Went up to them, fed with men living, and lit of men's hands for a
           shrine or a pyre;
     And the east and the west wind scattered their ashes abroad, that
           his name should be blest
     Of the tribes of the chosen whose blessings are curses from
           uttermost east unto west.


     II

     I

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Poems and Ballads (Third Series): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles; Swinburne—Vol. III

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