C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Frank Taylor
Poems of the Great War: Englands Dead
H
Striding the deep sea-dykes fast home they fare,—
Where is my wedded love? Where is my boy?
Where go the dead that died for England, where?
Thy boy, thy wedded love, O gentle-eyed
Woman of England, nor far over seas
Mixing with dull earth sleep the dead that died
Bear each his part; unseen of bounded sight,
Down the vast firmament there floats and flames,
Crested with stars and panoplied in light,
With lambent lance and white, bright, blinding sword,
All riding upon horses,—what are they?
They are the dead which died in Christ their Lord
As on the mount the triple vision shone,
So shine they now, and like the noontide sun
Before them all the fair Saint George rides on.
To him of Agincourt, a kingly pair,
With many mighty men which bent the bow,—
There go the dead that died for England, there;
Of Devon, Grenville, Gilbert, mariners rare,
She too who thought foul scorn of Philip’s power,—
There go the dead that died for England, there;
And happy Wolfe; wan Pitt released from care,
Nelson the well-beloved and all his kind,—
There go the dead that died for England, there;
And Nicholson, impatient of despair,
And Gordon, faithful, desolate sentinel,—
There go the dead that died for England, there;
Victoria moves with mild, maternal air,
Still vigilant, still prayerful for the land,—
There go the dead that died for England, there.
Irresolute, as men that seek no foe,
But by the pathless sea, by peak and plain,
Bright-eyed, stern-lipped, all day, all night, they go
Wind-withered woods, so go they swift and fell,
Warring with principalities and powers,
Hunting through space the swart, old bands of Hell;
Ring like white iron with the rhythmic tread
Of these and their innumerable peers;
But most round England muster England’s dead,
With Arctic snows white-girdled, bathed in suns
Asian and Australasian, there go these;
And where one solitary trader runs
Glimmers for England, one unsleeping brain
Watches and works for England, thitherward
Gather the bright souls of her servants slain
Round England’s child as sweeps the northern gale
Round some stark pine-tree on the moorland steep,
And from the flash and rattle of their mail
Frustrate. O glad condition and sublime
Of our undying dead, to fight and foil
The ancient foe, continually to climb
Some soul whose star-like name lit all their course,
And commune with him, to discern and greet
Old kindred, love, and friendship, hound and horse;
And labor for the loves that grope on earth,
To wait serenely till all souls shall be
One in God’s aristocracy of worth,—
That southern tomb thy hands may never tend
Was but the gateway thy loved boy passed through,
Thy wedded love passed through, that he might wend
Of his great blade nor hear his trumpets blare,
Yet thick as brown leaves round about thy ways,
There go the dead that died for England, there.