Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/324

 324

Sleep on, O Drake, sleep well,

In days not wholly dire!

Grenville, whom nought could quell,

Unquenched is still thy fire.

And thou that hadst no peer,

Nelson, thou need'st not fear!

Thy sons and heirs are here,

And shall not shame their sire. William Watson

H, hear! Oh, hear!

Across the sullen tide

Across the echoing dome horizon-wide

What pulse of fear

Beats with tremendous boom?

What call of instant doom,

With thunderstroke of terror and of pride,

With urgency that may not be denied,

Reverberates upon the heart's own drum

Come! . . . Come! . . . for thou must come!

Come forth, O Soul!

This is thy day of power.

This is the day and this the glorious hour

That was the goal

Of thy self-conquering strife.

The love of child and wife,

The fields of Earth and the wide ways of Thought—

Did not thy purpose count them all as nought

That in this moment thou thyself mayst give

And in thy country's life for ever live?

Therefore rejoice

That in thy passionate prime

Youth's nobler hope disdained the spoils of Time

And thine own choice

Fore-earned for thee this day.