Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
I. PatriotismAve Imperatrix
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)S
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,
The long white-crested waves of fight,
And all the deadly fires which are
The torches of the lords of Night.
The treacherous Russian knows so well,
With gaping blackened jaws are seen
To leap through hail of screaming shell.
Hath left his sapphire cave of sea,
To battle with the storm that mars
The star of England’s chivalry.
Across the Pathan’s reedy fen,
And the high steeps of Indian snows
Shake to the tread of armèd men.
Beneath his cool pomegranate-trees,
Clutches his sword in fierce surmise
When on the mountain-side he sees
To tell how he hath heard afar
The measured roll of English drums
Beat at the gates of Kandahar.
Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,
England with bare and bloody feet
Climbs the steep road of wide empire.
Gray pillar of the Indian sky,
Where saw’st thou last in clanging fight
Our wingèd dogs of Victory?
Bokhara, where red lilies blow,
And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go;
The gilded garden of the sun,
Whence the long dusty caravan
Brings cedar and vermilion;
Set at the mountain’s scarpèd feet,
Whose marble tanks are ever full
With water for the noonday heat,
A little maid Circasian
Is led, a present from the Czar
Unto some old and bearded khan,—
And flapped wide wings in fiery fight;
But the sad dove, that sits alone
In England—she hath no delight.
To greet her love with love-lit eyes:
Down in some treacherous black ravine,
Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies.
The lingering wistful children wait
To climb upon their father’s knee;
And in each house made desolate
Will kiss the relics of the slain—
Some tarnished epaulette—some sword—
Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain.
Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,
Where we might deck their broken shields
With all the flowers the dead love best.
And many in the Afghan land,
And many where the Ganges falls
Through seven mouths of shifting sand.
And others in the seas which are
The portals to the East, or by
The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.
O silence of the sunless day!
O still ravine! O stormy deep!
Give up your prey! Give up your prey!
Whose weary race is never won,
O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield
For every inch of ground a son?
Change thy glad song to song of pain;
Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,
And will not yield them back again.
Possess the flower of English land—
Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,
Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.
The whole round world with nets of gold,
If hidden in our heart is found
The care that groweth never old?
Pine-forest like, on every main?
Ruin and wreck are at our side,
Grim warders of the House of pain.
Where is our English chivalry?
Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,
And sobbing waves their threnody.
What word of love can dead lips send?
O wasted dust! O senseless clay!
Is this the end? is this the end?
To vex their solemn slumber so;
Though, childless, and with thorn-crowned head,
Up the steep road must England go,
Her watchmen shall descry from far
The young Republic like a sun
Rise from these crimson seas of war.