Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

John Keble (1792–1866)

United States (from Lyra Apostolica)

TYRE of the farther West! be thou too warned,

Whose eagle wings thine own green world o’erspread,

Touching two Oceans: wherefore hast thou scorned

Thy fathers’ God, O proud and full of bread?

Why lies the Cross unhonoured on thy ground

While in mid air thy stars and arrows flaunt?

That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound,

Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt,

Thou bring it to be blessed where Saints and Angels haunt?

The holy seed, by Heaven’s peculiar grace,

Is rooted here and there in thy dark woods;

But many a rank weed round it grows apace,

And Mammon builds beside thy mighty floods,

O’ertopping Nature, braving Nature’s God;

O while thou yet hast room, fair fruitful land,

Ere war and want have stained thy virgin sod,

Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand,

Whence Truth her sign may make o’er forest, lake, and strand.

Eastward, this hour, perchance thou turn’st thine ear,

Listening if haply with the surging sea,

Blend sounds of Ruin from a land once dear

To thee and Heaven. O trying hour for thee!

Tyre mocked when Salem fell; where now is Tyre?

Heaven was against her. Nations thick as waves,

Burst o’er her walls, to Ocean doomed and fire:

And now the tideless water idly laves

Her towers, and lone sands heap her crowned merchants’ graves.