Upon a bleak Northumbrian moor,
Behold a palace raised.Behold it filled
With all that fingers fashion, deftly skilled.
With all that strongest fibred brains have willed,
When they, like natures self, have vowed to build
Structures that shall for centuries endure.
How came these marvels hither? By what power
Have all been gathered in the self-same hour,
Upon a bleak Northumbrian moor?
Why should both East and West for ever pour,
The willing tribute of their golden store
In ceaseless tide upon thy storm-swept shore?
Oh little island in the northern main!
Oh little isle between two oceans' spray!
Deep lies the answer. Endless is the chain
That binds the far-off ages with to-day.
Here, when the north wind raved,
The giant tree-ferns waved,
We see them o’er the unimagined tracts of time.
Yet never eye beheld
Those woodlands fair of Eld ;
No hand those tree-trunks felled,
Scarred by the summer’s flash, silvery with winter’s rime.
For countless years the sun
Through steaming vapours dun,
Beheld their growth renewed
In sylvan solitude.
While the green-mantled earth slept in her innocent prime.
Wave! fronded forests! wave !
Sink gradual to your grave
Beneath some nameless river’s oozy bed,
Roll ! myriad ages! roll!
So shall the treasure, coal,
Be stored for some new race, creation’s crown and head.
But vain is nature’s store,
Vain as the golden ore
Upon some barren isle for famine-wearied men,
Unless her sons be true,
Mighty to dare and do,
And prompt to bind at need the social bond again.
Patience and mutual trust,
And courage to be just,
And the frank, fearless gaze that seeks a brother’s eyes,
And loving loyalty.
Law-bound yet ever free—
Upon these deep-set stones enduring empires rise.
Thus hath our England grown,
E’er since, long years agone,
She first did turn her face towards freedom’s holy light,
When Alfred, best of kings,
Beat back the raven’s wings,
And gave her law for war, sweet day for barbarous night.
Till now, when Alfred’s child
Sees ‘neath her sceptre mild,
Wide ocean-sundered realms in loyal love unite.
Lady! who through thy tears,
Surveyest the traversed years,
The bright, the sad, the strange half-century,
The people’s shouts acclaim
Thy loved, victorious name.
Oh, be that name the pledge of conquests yet to be,
O’er want and grinding care,
Faction and fierce despair,
Dark ignorance in her lair,
And all that mars, this day, our joyous jubilee.
Lord of the ages! Thine
Is the far-traced design,
That blends earth’s mighty past with her to-be.
Slowly the web unrolls,
And only wisest souls
Some curves of thine enwoven cypher see.
Power fades and glory wanes,
But the Unseen remains,
Thither draw our hearts, and let them rest in thee.
One wrote of old, “The struggle of this dying
Is all I dread:
I shall not heed when men above me, sighing,
Say, ‘He is dead.'”
Not in such words, oh Father of our Spirits,
Speak we again:
A fear, a hope each child of us inherits,
Making them vain.
Awful the hour, and shall be through the ages,
That closeth Life;
With the worn soul the weary body wages
Self-torturing strife.
Till far, so far from loving eyes around them,
One journeyeth lone,
And that close wedlock that for years hath bound them
Ends with a groan.
The pale still form, so late so dear a treasure,
Its fate we know;
The dust, the worm, its depth of ruin measure
Where it lies low.
But the vast doubt wherewith our souls are shaken
Outlasts the tomb!
“Where, in what regions shall the wanderer waken,
Gazing on whom?”
Father! I live or die, in this confiding,
That Thou art King;
That each still star above me owns Thy guiding,
Each wild bird’s wing.
That Nature feels Thee, great unseen Accorder
Of all her wheels,
That tokens manifest of Thy mightier order
Her strife reveals.
And that without Thee, not a wave is heaving
Nor flake descends,
That all the giant Powers of her conceiving
Are thy Son’s friends.
Yet, I beseech Thee, send not these to light me
Through the dark vale;
They are so strong, so passionlessly mighty,
And I so frail.
No! let me gaze, not on some sea far reaching
Nor star-sprent sky,
But on a Face in which mine own, beseeching,
May read reply.
For more than Poet’s song or Painter’s seeing
Of fiery Hell,
Thrills me this dread of waking into Being
Where no souls dwell.
Such was my cry: hath not the mighty Maker
Who gave me Christ,
Hath he not granted me a sweet Awaker
For the last tryst?
Given a Son who left the peace unbroken
That reigns above,
That he might whisper God’s great name unspoken,
The name of Love !
Have I not known him? Yes, and still am knowing,
And more shall know;
Have not his sweet eyes guided all my going,
Wept with my woe ;
Gleamed a bright dawn-hope when the clouds of sadness
Made my soul dim,
And looked their warning when an alien gladness
Lured me from Him?
Lord, when I tread this valley of our dying,
Sharp cliffs between,
Where over all, one ghastly Shadow lying
Fills the ravine,
E’en then, thy kingly sceptre being o’er me,
I will not fear,
Thy crook, my Shepherd, dimly seen before me,
My way shall clear.
And when the grave must yield her prey down-stricken,
When sleep is o’er,
When the strange stirs of life begin to quicken
This form once more.
Oh Son of Man, if Thee and not another
I here have known,
If T may see Thee then, our first-born Brother,
Upon Thy throne.
How stern soe’er, how terrible in brightness
That dawn shall break,
I shall be satisfied with thy dear likeness
When I awake.