Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/170

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Stars trembled in broad heaven, faint with pity.

An hour to dawn I looked. Beside the trees

Wet mist shaped other trees that branching rose,

Covering the woods and putting out the stars.

There was no murmur on the seas,

No wind blew—only the wandering air that grows

With dawn, then murmurs, sighs,

And dies.

The mist climbed slowly, putting out the stars,

And the earth trembled when the stars were gone;

And moving strangely everywhere upon

The trembling earth, thickened the watery mist.

And for a time the holy things are veiled.

England's wise thoughts are swords: her quiet hours

Are trodden underfoot like wayside flowers,

And every English heart is England's wholly.

In starless night

A serious passion streams the heaven with light.

A common beating is in the air—

The heart of England throbbing everywhere.

And all her roads are nerves of noble thought,

And all her people's brain is but her brain;

And all her history, less her shame,

Is part of her requickened consciousness.

Her courage rises clean again.

Even in victory there hides defeat;

The spirit's murdered though the body survives,

Except the cause for which a people strives

Burn with no covetous, foul heat.

Fights she against herself who infamously draws

The sword against man's secret spiritual laws.

But thou, England, because a bitter heel

Hath sought to bruise the brain, the sensitive will,

The conscience of the world,

For this, England, art risen, and shalt fight

Purely through long profoundest night,