Pale women who have lost their lord
    Will kiss the relics of the slain—­
  Some tarnished epaulette—­some sword—­
    Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain.

  For not in quiet English fields
    Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,
  Where we might deck their broken shields
    With all the flowers the dead love best.

  For some are by the Delhi walls,
    And many in the Afghan land,
  And many where the Ganges falls
    Through seven mouths of shifting sand.

  And some in Russian waters lie,
    And others in the seas which are
  The portals to the East, or by
    The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.

  O wandering graves!  O restless sleep! 
    O silence of the sunless day! 
  O still ravine!  O stormy deep! 
    Give up your prey!  Give up your prey!

  And those whose wounds are never healed,
    Whose weary race is never won,
  O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield
    For every inch of ground a son?

  Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,
    Change thy glad song to song of pain;
  Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,
    And will not yield them back again.

  Wave and wild wind and foreign shore
    Possess the flower of English land—­
  Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,
    Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.

  What profit now that we have bound
    The whole round world with nets of gold,
  If hidden in our heart is found
    The care that groweth never old?

  What profit that our galleys ride,
    Pine-forest like, on every main? 
  Ruin and wreck are at our side,
    Grim warders of the House of pain.

  Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet? 
    Where is our English chivalry? 
  Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,
    And sobbing waves their threnody.

  O loved ones lying far away,
    What word of love can dead lips send? 
  O wasted dust!  O senseless clay! 
    Is this the end? is this the end?

  Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead
    To vex their solemn slumber so;
  Though, childless, and with thorn-crowned head,
    Up the steep road must England go,

  Yet when this fiery web is spun,
    Her watchmen shall descry from far
  The young Republic like a sun
    Rise from these crimson seas of war.

OSCAR WILDE.

* * * * *

AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN.

      All hail; thou noble land,
        Our Fathers’ native soil! 
      O, stretch thy mighty hand,
        Gigantic grown by toil,
  O’er the vast Atlantic wave to our shore! 
      For thou with magic might
      Canst reach to where the light
      Of Phoebus travels bright
      The world o’er!