For huge possessions render slack
     The power we need to hold them fast;
     Save when a quickened heart shall make
     Our people one, to meet what blast
     May blow from temporal heavens overcast.

     Our people one!  Nor they with strength
     Dependent on a single arm: 
     Alert, and braced the whole land’s length,
     Rejoicing in their manhood’s charm
     For friend or foe; to succour, not to harm.

     Has ever weakness won esteem? 
     Or counts it as a prized ally? 
     They who have read in History deem
     It ranks among the slavish fry,
     Whose claim to live justiciary Fates deny.

     It can not be declared we are
     A nation till from end to end
     The land can show such front to war
     As bids a crouching foe expend
     His ire in air, and preferably be friend.

     We dreading him, we do him wrong;
     For fears discolour, fears invite. 
     Like him, our task is to be strong;
     Unlike him, claiming not by might
     To snatch an envied treasure as a right.

     So may a stouter brotherhood
     At home be signalled over sea
     For righteous, and be understood,
     Nay, welcomed, when ’tis shown that we
     All duties have embraced in being free.

     This Britain slumbering, she is rich;
     Lies placid as a cradled child;
     At times with an uneasy twitch,
     That tells of dreams unduly wild. 
     Shall she be with a foreign drug defiled?

     The grandeur of her deeds recall;
     Look on her face so kindly fair: 
     This Britain! and were she to fall,
     Mankind would breathe a harsher air,
     The nations miss a light of leading rare.

     On como

     A rainless darkness drew o’er the lake
     As we lay in our boat with oars unshipped. 
     It seemed neither cloud nor water awake,
     And forth of the low black curtain slipped
     Thunderless lightning.  Scoff no more
     At angels imagined in downward flight
     For the daughters of earth as fabled of yore: 
     Here was beauty might well invite
     Dark heavens to gleam with the fire of a sun
     Resurgent; here the exchanged embrace
     Worthy of heaven and earth made one.

     And witness it, ye of the privileged space,
     Said the flash; and the mountains, as from an abyss
     For quivering seconds leaped up to attest
     That given, received, renewed was the kiss;
     The lips to lips and the breast to breast;
     All in a glory of ecstasy, swift
     As an eagle at prey, and pure as the prayer
     Of an infant bidden joined hands uplift
     To be guarded through darkness by spirits of air,
     Ere setting the sails of sleep till day. 
     Slowly the low cloud swung, and far