matched for foes,
     Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent,
     The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex,
     Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent;
     Armed to support her sword;—­lest we compose
     That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.

     Trafalgar day

     He leads:  we hear our Seaman’s call
     In the roll of battles won;
     For he is Britain’s Admiral
     Till setting of her sun.

     When Britain’s life was in her ships,
     He kept the sea as his own right;
     And saved us from more fell eclipse
     Than drops on day from blackest night. 
     Again his battle spat the flame! 
     Again his victory flag men saw! 
     At sound of Nelson’s chieftain name,
     A deeper breath did Freedom draw.

     Each trusty captain knew his part: 
     They served as men, not marshalled kine: 
     The pulses they of his great heart,
     With heads to work his main design. 
     Their Nelson’s word, to beat the foe,
     And spare the fall’n, before them shone. 
     Good was the hour of blow for blow,
     And clear their course while they fought on.

     Behold the Envied vanward sweep! —
     A day in mourning weeds adored! 
     Then Victory was wrought to weep;
     Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.

     A breezeless flag above a shroud
     All Britain was when wind and wave,
     To make her, passing human, proud,
     Brought his last gift from o’er the grave!

     Uprose the soul of him a star
     On that brave day of Ocean days: 
     It rolled the smoke from Trafalger
     To darken Austerlitz ablaze. 
     Are we the men of old, its light
     Will point us under every sky
     The path he took; and must we fight,
     Our Nelson be our battle-cry!

     He leads:  we hear our Seaman’s call
     In the roll of battles won;
     For he is Britain’s Admiral
     Till setting of her sun.

     The revolution

     I

     Not yet had History’s Aetna smoked the skies,
     And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained,
     While overhead in ordered set and rise
     Her kingly crowns immutably defiled;
     Effulgent on funereal piled
     Across the vacant heavens, and distrained
     Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear;
     Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.

     II

     Through marching scores of winters racked she lay,
     Beneath a hoar-frost’s brilliant crust,
     Whereon the jewelled flies that drained
     Her breasts disported in a glistering spray;
     She, the land’s fount of fruits, enclosed with dust;
     By good and evil angels fed, sustained
     In part to curse, in part to pray,
     Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw
     The throbs of her charged heart before the Just,
     So worn the harrowed surface had become: 
     And still they deemed the dance above was Law,
     Amort all passion in a rebel dumb.