All love that rests upon her
  Like sunshine and sweet air,
All light of perfect honour
  And praise that ends in prayer,
She wins not more surely, she wears not more proudly,
Than the token of tribute that clatters thus loudly,
The tribute of foes when they meet
That rattles and rings at her feet,
The tribute of rage and of rancour,
  The tribute of slaves to the free,
To the people whose hope hath its anchor
        Made fast in the sea.

VII.

No fool that bows the back he
  Feels fit for scourge or brand,
No scurril scribes that lackey
  The lords of Lackeyland,
No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet,
For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet,
No whelp of as currish a pack
As the litter whose yelp it gives back,
Though he answer the cry of his brother
  As echoes might answer from caves,
Shall be witness as though for a mother
        Whose children were slaves.

VIII.

But those found fit to love her,
  Whose love has root in faith,
Who hear, though darkness cover
  Time’s face, what memory saith,
Who seek not the service of great men or small men
But the weal that is common for comfort of all men,
Those yet that in trust have beholden
Truth’s dawn over England grow golden
And quicken the darkness that stagnates
  And scatter the shadows that flee,
Shall reply for her meanest as magnates
        And masters by sea.

IX.

And all shall mark her station,
  Her message all shall hear,
When, equal-eyed, the nation
  Bids all her sons draw near,
And freedom be more than tradition or faction,
And thought be no swifter to serve her than action,
And justice alone be above her,
That love may be prouder to love her,
And time on the crest of her story
  Inscribe, as remembrance engraves,
The sign that subdues with its glory
        Kings, princes, and slaves.

A WORD FROM THE PSALMIST.

PS.  XCIV. 8.

I.

    ’Take heed, ye unwise among the people: 
      O ye fools, when will ye understand?’
    From pulpit or choir beneath the steeple,
      Though the words be fierce, the tones are bland. 
But a louder than the Church’s echo thunders
  In the ears of men who may not choose but hear,
And the heart in him that hears it leaps and wonders,
  With triumphant hope astonished, or with fear
    For the names whose sound was power awaken
      Neither love nor reverence now nor dread;
    Their strongholds and shrines are stormed and taken,
      Their kingdom and all its works are dead.

II.