Hell for Spain, and heaven for England,--God to God, and man to man,-- Met confronted, light with darkness, life with death: since time began, Never earth nor sea beheld so great a stake before them set, Save when Athens hurled back Asia from the lists wherein they met; Never since the sands of ages through the glass of history ran Saw the sun in heaven a lordlier day than this that lights us yet. II For the light that abides upon England, the glory that rests on her godlike name, The pride that is love and the love that is faith, a perfume dissolved in flame, Took fire from the dawn of the fierce July when fleets were scattered as foam And squadrons as flakes of spray; when galleon and galliass that shadowed the sea Were swept from her waves like shadows that pass with the clouds they fell from, and she Laughed loud to the wind as it gave to her keeping the glories of Spain and Rome. III Three hundred summers have fallen as leaves by the storms in their season thinned, Since northward the war-ships of Spain came sheer up the way of the south-west wind: Where the citadel cliffs of England are flanked with bastions of serpentine, Far off to the windward loomed their hulls, an hundred and twenty-nine, All filled full of the war, full-fraught with battle and charged with bale; Then store-ships weighted with cannon; and all were an hundred and fifty sail. The measureless menace of darkness anhungered with hope to prevail upon light, The shadow of death made substance, the present and visible spirit of night, Came, shaped as a waxing or waning moon that rose with the fall of day, To the channel where couches the Lion in guard of the gate of the lustrous bay. Fair England, sweet as the sea that shields her, and pure as the sea from stain, Smiled, hearing hardly for scorn that stirred her the menace of saintly Spain. III I "They that ride over ocean wide with hempen bridle and horse of tree," How shall they in the darkening day of wrath and anguish and fear go free? How shall these that have curbed the seas not feel his bridle who made the sea? God shall bow them and break them now: for what is man in the Lord God's sight? Fear shall shake them, and shame shall break, and all the noon of their pride be night: These that sinned shall the ravening wind of doom bring under, and judgment smite.