Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892)Love thou thy Land
L
From out the storied Past, and used
Within the Present, but transfused
Thro’ future time by power of thought.
Love, that endures not sordid ends,
For English natures, freemen, friends,
Thy brothers and immortal souls.
Nor feed with crude imaginings
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings
That every sophister can lime.
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind, who wait for day,
Tho’ sitting girt with doubtful light.
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.
Cut Prejudice against the grain:
But gentle words are always gain:
Regard the weakness of thy peers:
Of pensions, neither count on praise:
It grows to guerdon after-days:
Nor deal in watch-words overmuch:
Not master’d by some modern term;
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm:
And in its season bring the law;
With Life, that, working strongly, binds—
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all.
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro’ many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form.
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.
To ingroove itself with that which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.
For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.
A motion toiling in the gloom—
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States—
But vague in vapour, hard to mark;
And round them sea and air are dark
With great contrivances of Power.
Is bodied forth the second whole.
Regard gradation, lest the soul
Of Discord race the rising wind;
And heap their ashes on the head;
To shame the boast so often made,
That we are wiser than our sires.
Drive men in manhood, as in youth,
To follow flying steps of Truth
Across the brazen bridge of war—
Must ever shock, like armed foes,
And this be true, till Time shall close,
That Principles are rain’d in blood;
To hold his hope thro’ shame and guilt,
But with his hand against the hilt,
Would pace the troubled land, like Peace;
Would serve his kind in deed and word,
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword,
That knowledge takes the sword away—
From either side, nor veil his eyes:
And if some dreadful need should rise
Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke:
As we bear blossom of the dead;
Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed
Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.