The measured roll of English drums

  Beat at the gates of Kandahar.

  For southern wind and east wind meet

  Where, girt and crowned by sword and fire,

  England with bare and bloody feet

  Climbs the steep road of wide empire.

  O lonely Himalayan height,

  Grey pillar of the Indian sky,

  Where saw’st thou last in clanging flight

  Our wingèd dogs of Victory?

  The almond-groves of Samarkand,

  Bokhara, where red lilies blow,

  And Oxus, by whose yellow sand

  The grave white-turbaned merchants go:

  And on from thence to Ispahan,

  The gilded garden of the sun,

  Whence the long dusty caravan

  Brings cedar wood and vermilion;

  And that dread city of Cabool

  Set at the mountain’s scarpèd feet,

  Whose marble tanks are ever full

  With water for the noonday heat:

  Where through the narrow straight Bazaar

  A little maid Circassian

  Is led, a present from the Czar

  Unto some old and bearded khan—

  Here have our wild war-eagles flown,

  And flapped wide wings in fiery fight;

  But the sad dove, that sits alone

  In England—she hath no delight.

  In vain the laughing girl will lean

  To greet her love with love-lit eyes:

  Down in some treacherous black ravine,

  Clutching his flag, the dead boy lies.

  And many a moon and sun will see

  The lingering wistful children wait

  To climb upon their father’s knee;

  And in each house made desolate

  Pale women who have lost their lord

  Will kiss the relics of the slain—

  Some tarnished epaulette—some sword—

  Poor toys to soothe such anguished pain.

  For not in quiet English fields

  Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,

  Where we might deck their broken shields

  With all the flowers the dead love best.

  For some are by the Delhi walls,

  And many in the Afghan land,

  And many where the Ganges falls

  Through seven mouths of shifting sand.

  And some in Russian waters lie,

  And others in the seas which are

  The portals to the East, or by

  The wind-swept heights of Trafalgar.

  O wandering graves! O restless sleep!

  O silence of the sunless day!

  O still ravine! O stormy deep!

  Give up your prey! Give up your prey!

  And thou whose wounds are never healed,

  Whose weary race is never won,

  O Cromwell’s England! must thou yield

  For every inch of ground a son?

  Go! crown with thorns thy gold-crowned head,

  Change thy glad song to song of pain;

  Wind and wild wave have got thy dead,

  And will not yield them back again.

  Wave and wild wind and foreign shore

  Possess the flower of English land—

  Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more,

  Hands that shall never clasp thy hand.

  What profit now that we have bound

  The whole round world with nets of gold,

  If hidden in our heart is found

  The care that groweth never old?

  What profit that our galleys ride,

  Pine-forest-like, on every main?

  Ruin and wreck are at our side,

  Grim warders of the House of pain.

  Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet?

  Where is our English chivalry?

  Wild grasses are their burial-sheet,

  And sobbing waves their threnody.

  O loved ones lying far away,

  What word of love can dead lips send!

  O wasted dust! O senseless clay!

  Is this the end! is this the end!

  Peace, peace! we wrong the noble dead

  To vex their solemn slumber so;

  Though childless, and with thorn-crowned head,

  Up the steep road must England go,

  Yet when this fiery web is spun,

  Her watchmen shall descry from far

  The young Republic like a sun

  Rise from these crimson seas of war.

  To Milton

  Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away

  From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;

  This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours

  Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,

  And the age changed unto a mimic play

  Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:

  For all our pomp and pageantry and powers

  We are but fit to delve the common clay,

  Seeing this little isle on which we stand,

  This England, this sea-lion of the sea,

  By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,

  Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land

  Which bare a triple empire in her hand

  When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

  Louis Napoleon

  Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings

  When far away upon a barbarous strand,

  In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,

  Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!

  Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,

  Or ride in state through Paris in the van

  Of thy returning legions, but instead

  Thy mother France, free and republican,

  Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place

  The better laurels of a soldier’s crown,

  That not dishonoured should thy soul go down

  To tell the mighty Sire of thy race

  That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,

  And found it sweeter than his honied bees,

  And that the giant wave Democracy

  Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease.

  Sonnet

  On the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria

  Christ, dost thou live indeed? or are thy bones

  Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre?

  And was thy Rising only dreamed by her

  Whose love of thee for all her sin atones?

  For here the air is horrid with men’s groans,

  The priests who call upon thy name are slain,

  Dost thou not hear the bitter wail of pain

  From those whose children lie upon the stones?

  Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom

  Curtains the land, and through the starless night

  Over thy Cross a Crescent moon I see!

  If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb

  Come down, O Son of Man! and show thy might

  Lest Muhammad be crowned instead of Thee!

  Quantum Mutata

  There was a time in Europe long ago

  When no man died for freedom anywhere,

  But England’s lion leaping from its lair

  Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so

  While England could a great Republic show.

  Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care

  Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair

  The Pontiff in his painted portico

  Trembled before our stern ambassadors.

  How comes it then that from such high estate

  We have thus fallen, save that Luxury

  With barren merchandise piles up the gate

  Where noble thoughts and deeds should enter by:

  Else might we still be Milton’s heritors.

  Libertatis Sacra Fames

  Albeit nurtured in democracy,

  And liking best that state republican

  Where every man is Kinglike and no man

  Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,

  Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,

  Better the rule of One, whom all obey,

  Than to let clamorous demagogues betray

  Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.

  Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane

  Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street

  For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign

  Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,

  Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,

  Or Murder with his silent bloody feet.

  Theoretikos

  This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:

  Of all its ancient chivalry and might

  Our little island is forsaken quite:

  Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,

  And from its hills that voice hath passed away

  Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it,

  Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit

  For this vile traffic-house, where day by day

  Wisdom and reverence are sold at mart,

  And the rude people rage with ignorant cries

  Against an heritage of centuries.

  It mars my calm: wherefore in dreams of Art

  And loftiest culture I would stand apart,

  Neither for God, nor for his enemies.

  The Garden of Eros

  It is full summer now, the heart of June;

  Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir

  Upon the upland meadow where too soon

  Rich autumn time, the season’s usurer,

  Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,

  And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

  Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,

  That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on

  To vex the rose with jealousy, and still

  The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,

  And like a strayed and wandering reveller

  Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June’s messenger

  The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,

  One pale narcissus loiters fearfully

  Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid

  Of their own loveliness some violets lie

  That will not look the gold sun in the face

  For fear of too much splendour—ah! methinks it is a place

  Which should be trodden by Persephone

  When wearied of the flowerless fields of Dis!

  Or danced on by the lads of Arcady!

  The hidden secret of eternal bliss

  Known to the Grecian here a man might find,

  Ah! you and I may find it now if Love and Sleep be kind.

  There are the flowers which mourning Herakles

  Strewed on the tomb of Hylas, columbine,

  Its white doves all a-flutter where the breeze

  Kissed them too harshly, the small celandine,

  That yellow-kirtled chorister of eve,

  And lilac lady’s-smock—but let them bloom alone, and leave

  Yon spirèd hollyhock red-crocketed

  To sway its silent chimes, else must the bee,

  Its little bellringer, go seek instead

  Some other pleasaunce; the anemone

  That weeps at daybreak, like a silly girl

  Before her love, and hardly lets the butterflies unfurl

  Their painted wings beside it—bid it pine

  In pale virginity; the winter snow

  Will suit it better than those lips of thine

  Whose fires would but scorch it, rather go

  And pluck that amorous flower which blooms alone,

  Fed by the pander wind with dust of kisses not its own.

  The trumpet-mouths of red convolvulus

  So dear to maidens, creamy meadow-sweet

  Whiter than Juno’s throat and odorous

  As all Arabia, hyacinths the feet

  Of Huntress Dian would be loth to mar

  For any dappled fawn—pluck these, and those fond flowers which are

  Fairer than what Queen Venus trod upon

  Beneath the pines of Ida, eucharis,

  That morning star which does not dread the sun,

  And budding marjoram which but to kiss

  Would sweeten Cytheraea’s lips and make

  Adonis jealous—these for thy head—and for thy girdle take

  Yon curving spray of purple clematis

  Whose gorgeous dye outflames the Tyrian King,

  And foxgloves with their nodding chalices,

  But that one narciss which the startled Spring

  Let from her kirtle fall when first she heard

  In her own woods the wild tempestuous song of summer’s bird,

  Ah! leave it for a subtle memory

  Of those sweet tremulous days of rain and sun,

  When April laughed between her tears to see

  The early primrose with shy footsteps run

  From the gnarled oak-tree roots till all the wold,

  Spite of its brown and trampled leaves, grew bright with shimmering gold.

  Nay, pluck it too, it is not half so sweet

  As thou thyself, my soul’s idolatry!

  And when thou art a-wearied at thy feet

  Shall oxlips weave their brightest tapestry,

  For thee the woodbine shall forget its pride

  And veil its tangled whorls, and thou shalt walk on daisies pied.

  And I will cut a reed by yonder spring

  And make the wood-gods jealous, and old Pan

  Wonder what young intruder dares to sing

  In these still haunts, where never foot of man

  Should tread at evening, lest he chance to spy

  The marble limbs of Artemis and all her company.

  And I will tell thee why the jacinth wears

  Such dread embroidery of dolorous moan,

  And why the hapless nightingale forbears

  To sing her song at noon, but weeps alone

  When the fleet swallow sleeps, and rich men feast,

  And why the laurel trembles when she sees the lightening east.

  And I will sing how sad Proserpina

  Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed,

  And lure the silver-breasted Helena

  Back from the lotus meadows of the dead,

  So shalt thou see that awful loveliness

  For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war’s abyss!

  And then I’ll pipe to thee that Grecian tale

  How Cynthia loves the lad Endymion,

  And hidden in a grey and misty veil

  Hies to the cliffs of Latmos once the Sun

  Leaps from his ocean bed in fruitless chase

  Of those pale flying feet which fade away in his embrace.

  And if my flute can breathe sweet melody,

  We may behold Her face who long ago

  Dwelt among men by the Aegean sea,

  And whose sad house with pillaged portico

  And friezeless wall and columns toppled down

  Looms o’er the ruins of that fair and violet-cinctured town.

  Spirit of Beauty! tarry still awhile,

  They are not dead, thine ancient votaries,