Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/38

16 Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether,

But we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together.

My arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by;

Sons, I have borne many sons, but my dugs are not dry.

Look, I have made ye a place and opened wide the doors,

That ye may talk together, your Barons and Councillors—

Wards of the Outer March, Lords of the Lower Seas,

Ay, talk to your gray mother that bore you on her knees!—

That ye may talk together, brother to brother's face—

Thus for the good of your peoples—thus for the Pride of the Race.

Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures,

I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours:

In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all,

That Our House stand together and the pillars do not fall.