Follow'd up in valley and glen

With blare of bugle, clamour of men,
Roll of cannon and clash of arms,
And England pouring on her foes.
Such a war had such a close.

Again their ravening eagle rose

In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing wings,
And barking for the thrones of kings;

Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown

On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down;
A day of onsets of despair!

Dash'd on every rocky square

Their surging charges foam'd themselves away;
Last, the Prussian trumpet blew ;

Thro' the long-tormented air

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Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray,

And down we swept and charged and overthrew.

130

So great a soldier taught us there,

What long-enduring hearts could do

In that world's-earthquake, Waterloo!

Mighty seaman, tender and true,

And pure as he from taint of craven guile,
O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,

O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile,
If aught of things that here befall

Touch a spirit among things divine,

If love of country move thee there at all,

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Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine!

And thro' the centuries let a people's voice
In full acclaim,

A people's voice,

A people's voice, when they rejoice

The proof and echo of all human fame,

At civic revel and pomp and game,

Attest their great commander's claim

With honour, honour, honour, honour to him,
Eternal honour to his name.

150

VII

A people's voice! we are a people yet.
Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget,
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers;
Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set
His Saxon in blown seas and storming showers,
We have a voice, with which to pay the debt
Of boundless love and reverence and regret
To those great men who fought, and kept it ours.
And keep it ours, O God, from brute control;
O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole

160

And save the one true seed of freedom sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne,
That sober freedom out of which there springs
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings;
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,

And drill the raw world for the march of mind,

Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just.
But wink no more in slothful overtrust.
Remember him who led your hosts;

170

He bad you guard the sacred coasts.

Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall;
His voice is silent in your council-hall
For ever; and whatever tempests lour
For ever silent; even if they broke
In thunder, silent; yet remember all

He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke;
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power;
Who let the turbid streams of rumour flow
Thro' either babbling world of high and low;
Whose life was work, whose language rife
With rugged maxims hewn from life;
Who never spoke against a foe;

Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke
All great self-seekers trampling on the right:
Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named ;
Truth-lover was our English Duke;
Whatever record leap to light
He never shall be shamed.

VIII

Lo, the leader in these glorious wars
Now to glorious burial slowly borne,
Follow'd by the brave of other lands,
He, on whom from both her open hands
Lavish Honour shower'd all her stars,

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190

And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn.
Yea, let all good things await

Him who cares not to be great,

But as he saves or serves the state.

200

Not once or twice in our rough island-story,

The path of duty was the way to glory:
He that walks it, only thirsting

For the right, and learns to deaden

Love of self, before his journey closes,

He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.

Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory:

210

He, that ever following her commands,

On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,

Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands

To which our God Himself is moon and sun.
Such was he: his work is done.

But while the races of mankind endure,

Let his great example stand

Colossal, seen of every land,

And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure;

Till in all lands and thro' all human story

The path of duty be the way to glory:

And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame
For many and many an age proclaim

At civic revel and pomp and game,

And when the long-illumined cities flame,

Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame,

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With honour, honour, honour, honour to him,
Eternal honour to his name.

230

IX

Peace, his triumph will be sung

By some yet unmoulded tongue

Far on in summers that we shall not see:

Peace, it is a day of pain

For one about whose patriarchal knee

Late the little children clung:

O peace, it is a day of pain

For one, upon whose hand and heart and brain

Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.

Ours the pain, be his the gain!

More than is of man's degree

Must be with us, watching here
At this, our great solemnity.
Whom we see not we revere.
We revere, and we refrain

From talk of battles loud and vain,

And brawling memories all too free
For such a wise humility

As befits a solemn fane:

We revere, and while we hear
The tides of Music's golden sea
Setting toward eternity,

Uplifted high in heart and hope are we,
Until we doubt not that for one so true
There must be other nobler work to do
Than when he fought at Waterloo,
And Victor he must ever be.

For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill

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250

And break the shore, and evermore

Make and break, and work their will;
Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll
Round us, each with different powers,

And other forms of life than ours,

What know we greater than the soul?

On God and Godlike men we build our trust.

Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears:

The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears;

The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears:

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;

He is gone who seem'd so great.-
Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own

Being here, and we believe him
Something far advanced in State,

And that he wears a truer crown

Than any wreath that man can weave him.
But speak no more of his renown,

Lay your earthly fancies down,

And in the vast cathedral leave him.
God accept him, Christ receive him.

1852.

MILTON

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270

280

Alcaics

O MIGHTY-MOUTH'D inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages;
Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrëan

Rings to the roar of an angel onset-
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches

Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palmwoods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.

10

ULYSSES

IT little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

Ac tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with meThat ever with a frolic welcome took