Читать книгу The lost chimes, and other poems - Gustav Melby - Страница 14
XVIII
ОглавлениеFair England, long by God elect and blessed,
His chosen land, as Palestine of old,
From which His light to all the world has shone,
Where Freedom sits with monarchs on their throne,
Where truth, more precious than the ruddy gold,
Is by her wise men fearlessly professed.
Where he, the many-minded genius
Arose to make her name and tongue immortal,
With never dying characters and song,
Who knew the soul among the vulgar throng,
As well as that of kings in castle portal,
And made them all so much akin to us.
Great Shakespeare, harbinger of Britain’s glory,
The child of ages, product of a race,
Born in the fulness of the time,—the world awaking
To a new day, its rusty fetters breaking,—
He with his torch showed it the better ways,
And linked the new with ancient fairy-story.
Sordino’s times were all with forces seething,
The new and old at war for mastery,
But through its hope and fear, its love and hating,
The nation with its rulers vacillating,
There came the age when light gained victory,
And Freedom through the songs of Shakespear breathing.
That Freedom then, as ever, bathed in blood,
And tried by fiery fagot and the stake,
The Freedom of the soul to trow and live,
As Christ commanded, ev’n that men should give—
Like He—their lives for His own Kingdom’s sake,
For none was free as He, upon the rood.
The voice of Freedom whispered through the world—
Like quick’ning breezes of advancing Spring,
Which wake the modest crocus ’mongst the hills,
And violets along the laughing rills,
And bid returning songster’s music ring
Through budding woodlands by the mist impearled.
Thus Freedom’s voice did wake the souls of men,
The lowly and the mighty felt its power,
But most the pure in heart who saw their God,
Their hearts rejoiced ev’n ’neath the scourging rod;
Alone they stood in suffering’s dark hour,
But in a strength which heaven did grant them then.
