Songs of love and empire. Эдит Несбит

      But from our hearts sprang an intenser flame

      When loyal Love met tender Love half way,

      And, in love’s script, wrote on the scroll of fame,

      Entwined with all the splendour of that day,

      The letters of her name.

      Then as fair roses grow ’mid leaves of green,

      Love amid loyalty grew strong and close,

      To hedge a pleasaunce round our Royal rose,

      Our sovereign maiden flower, our child, our Queen.

      The trumpets spake – in sonorous triumph shout,

      Their speech found echo in the hundred guns;

      From countless towers the answering bells rang out,

      And England’s heart spoke clamorous, through her sons,

      The exulting land throughout.

      Down streets ablaze with light the flags unfurled,

      Along dark, lonely hills the joy-fires crept,

      And eager swords within their scabbards leapt

      To guard our Lady and Queen against the world.

      Those swords are rusted now. Good men and true

      Dust in the dust are laid who held her dear;

      But from their grave the bright flower springs anew,

      Which for her festival we bring her here,

      The long years’ meed and due;

      The bud of homage graffed on chivalry.

      God took the souls that shrined the jewel of love,

      But made their sons inheritors thereof,

      In endless gold entail of loyalty.

      Time, compensating life, the fruit bestowed

      When in spent perfume passed the flower of youth;

      Her feet were set upon the upward road,

      Her face was turned towards the star of truth

      That in her soul abode.

      With youth the maid’s bright brow was garlanded

      But richer crowns adorn the dear white hair;

      The gathered love of all the years lies there,

      In coronal benediction on her head.

      She is of our blood, for hath not she, too, met

      The angels of delight and of despair?

      Does not she, too, remember and forget

      How bitter or how bright the lost days were?

      Her eyes have tears made wet;

      She has seen joy unveilèd even as we,

      Has laid upon cold clay the heart-warm kiss,

      She has known Sorrow for the king he is;

      She has held little children on her knee.

      Mother, dear Mother, these your children rise

      And call you blessèd, and shall we not, too,

      Who are your children in the greater wise,

      And love you for our land and her for you?

      The blessing sanctifies

      Your children as they breathe it at your knees,

      And, bringing little gifts from very far,

      Where the great nurseries of your Empire are,

      Your children’s blessings throng from over seas.

      On Love’s spread wings, and over leagues of space,

      Homage is borne from far-off sun-steeped lands;

      From many a domed mysterious Eastern place,

      Where Secresy holds Time between her hands,

      The children of your race

      Reach English hands towards your English throne;

      And from the far South turn blue English eyes,

      That never saw the blue of English skies,

      Yet call you Mother, and your land their own.

      Where ’mid great trees the mighty waters flow

      In arrogant submission to your sway,

      In fur of price your northern hunters go,

      And shafts of ardent greeting fly your way

      Across the splendid snow;

      And isles that with their coral, safe and small,

      Rock in the cradle of the tropic seas,

      In soft, strange speech join in the litanies

      That pride and prayer breathe at your festival.

      All round the world, on every far-off sea,

      In wind-ploughed oceans and in sun-kissed bays,

      By every busy wharf and chattering quay,

      Some cantle of your Empire sails or stays —

      Flaunts your supremacy

      Against the winds of all the world, and flies

      Your flag triumphant between blue and blue,

      Blazons to sun and star the name of you,

      And spreads your glory between seas and skies.

      There is no cottage garden, sunny-sweet,

      There is no pasture where our shepherds tend

      Their quiet flocks, no red-roofed village street,

      But holds for you the love-wish of a friend,

      Blent with high homage meet;

      No little farm among the cornfields lone,

      No little cot upon the uplands bare,

      But hears to-day in blessing and in prayer

      One name, Victoria, and that name your own.

      From the vast cities where the giant’s might,

      Pauseless, resistless, moves by night and day,

      From hidden mines where day is one with night,

      From weary lives whose days and nights are grey

      And empty of delight,

      From lives that rhyme to sunshine and the spring,

      From happiness at flood and hope at ebb,

      Rose the magnificent and mingled web

      That floats, your banner, at your thanksgiving.

      Throned on the surety of a splendid past,

      With present glory clothed as with the sun,

      Crowned with the future’s hopes, you know at last

      What treasure from the years your life has won;

      Behold, your hands hold fast

      The moon of Empire, and its sway controls

      The tides of war and peace, while in those hands

      Lies tender homage out of all the lands

      Against whose feet