Come forth, O Soul! This is thy day of power. This is the day and this the glorious hour That was the goal Of thy self-conquering strife. The love of child and wife, The fields of Earth and the wide ways of Thought-- Did not thy purpose count them all as nought That in this moment thou thyself mayst give And in thy country's life for ever live? {10} Therefore rejoice That in thy passionate prime Youth's nobler hope disdained the spoils of Time And thine own choice Fore-earned for thee this day. Rejoice! rejoice to obey In the great hour of life that men call Death The beat that bids thee draw heroic breath, Deep-throbbing till thy mortal heart be dumb Come! . . . Come! . . . the time is come! {11} VI _Farewell_ Mother, with unbowed head Hear thou across the sea The farewell of the dead, The dead who died for thee. Greet them again with tender words and grave, For, saving thee, themselves they could not save. To keep the house unharmed Their fathers built so fair, Deeming endurance armed Better than brute despair, They found the secret of the word that saith, "Service is sweet, for all true life is death." So greet thou well thy dead Across the homeless sea, And be thou comforted Because they died for thee. Far off they served, but now their deed is done For evermore their life and thine are one. {12} _Ode for Trafalgar Day, 1905_ "Partial firing continued until 4.30, when a victory having been reported to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, K.B., and Commander-in-Chief, he then died of his wound."--Log of the _Victory_, October 21, 1805. England! to-day let fire be in thine eyes And in thy heart the throb of leaping guns; Crown in thy streets the deed that never dies, And tell their fathers' fame to all thy sons! Behold! behold! on that unchanging sea Where day behind Trafalgar rises pale, How dread the storm to be Drifts up with ominous breath Cloud after towering cloud of billowy sail Full charged with thunder and the bolts of death. Yet when the noon is past, and thy delight, More delicate for these good hundred years, Has drunk the splendour and the sound of fight And the sweet sting of long-since vanished fears, Then, England, come thou down with sterner lips From the bright world of thy substantial power, Forget thy seas, thy ships, And that wide echoing dome To watch the soul of man in his dark hour Redeeming yet his dear lost land of home. {13}