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Lawn tennis may share her favours fair

Her
eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing-
Down comes her hair, but what does she care?
It's all her own, and it's worth the showing!

Her soul is sweet as the ocean air,
For prudery knows no haven there;
To find mock-modesty, please apply
To the conscious blush and the downcast eye.
Rich in the things contentment brings,
In every pure enjoyment wealthy,
Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings,

For body and mind are hale and healthy.
Her eyes they thrill with a right good will—
Her heart is light as a floating feather-
As pure and bright as the mountain rill

That leaps and laughs in the Highland
heather.

Go search the world and search the sea,
Then come you home and sing with me
There's no such gold and no such pearl
As a bright and beautiful English girl!

William Schwenk Gilbert.

XCII

THE BREATH OF AVON

TO ENGLISH-SPEAKING PILGRIMS ON SHAKESPEARE'S

BIRTHDAY

I

WHATE'ER of woe the Dark may hide in womb
For England, mother of kings of battle and song-
Rapine, or racial hate's mysterious wrong,
Blizzard of Chance, or fiery dart of Doom-
Let breath of Avon, rich of meadow-bloom,
Bind her to that great daughter sever'd long-
To near and far-off children young and strong-
With fetters woven of Avon's flower perfume.

Welcome, ye English-speaking pilgrims, ye
Whose hands around the world are join'd by him,
Who make his speech the language of the sea,
Till winds of ocean waft from rim to rim
The Breath of Avon : let this great day be
A Feast of Race no power shall ever dim.

II

From where the steeds of earth's twin oceans toss
Their manes along Columbia's chariot-way;
From where Australia's long blue billows play;
From where the morn, quenching the Southern Cross,
Startling the frigate-bird and albatross
Asleep in air, breaks over Table Bay-

Come hither, pilgrims, where these rushes sway
'Tween grassy banks of Avon soft as moss!
For, if ye found the breath of ocean sweet,
Sweeter is Avon's earthy, flowery smell,
Distill'd from roots that feel the coming spell
Of May, who bids all flowers that lov'd him meet
In meadows that, remembering Shakespeare's feet,
Hold still a dream of music where they fell.
Theodore Watts-Dunton.

XCIII

ENGLAND STANDS ALONE

(ENGLAND STANDS ALONE-WITHOUT AN ALLY.'

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A Continental Newspaper)

'SHE stands alone: ally nor friend has she,' Saith Europe of our England-her who bore

Drake, Blake, and Nelson-Warrior-Queen who

wore

Light's conquering glaive that strikes the conquered free.

Alone! From Canada comes o'er the sea,
And from that English coast with coral shore,
The old-world cry Europe hath heard of yore
From Dover cliffs: Ready, aye ready we!'

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'Europe,' saith England, hath forgot my boys!Forgot how tall, in yonder golden zone

'Neath Austral skies, my youngest born have grown (Bearers of bayonets now and swords for toys)— Forgot 'mid boltless thunder-harmless noiseThe sons with whom old England 'stands alone!' Theodore Watts-Dunton.

XCIV

ENGLAND

ENGLAND, queen of the waves, whose green inviolate girdle enrings thee round,

Mother fair as the morning, where is now the place of thy foemen found?

Still the sea that salutes us free proclaims them stricken, acclaims thee crowned.

Times may change, and the skies grow strange with signs of treason, and fraud, and fear:

Foes in union of strange communion may rise against thee from far and near:

Sloth and greed on thy strength may feed as cankers waxing from year to year.

Yet, though treason and fierce unreason should league and lie and defame and smite,

We that know thee, how far below thee the hatred burns of the sons of night,

We that love thee, behold above thee the witness written of life in light.

Life that shines from thee shows forth signs that none may read not but eyeless foes:

Hate, born blind, in his abject mind grows hopeful now but as madness grows:

Love, born wise, with exultant eyes adores thy glory, beholds and glows.

Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth:

Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth:

Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the serpent's tooth.

Greed and fraud, unabashed, unawed, may strive to sting thee at heel in vain :

Craft and fear and mistrust may leer and mourn and murmur and plead and plain:

Thou art thou: and thy sunbright brow is hers that blasted the strength of Spain.

Mother, mother beloved, none other could claim in place of thee England's place:

Earth bears none that beholds the sun so pure of record, so clothed with grace:

Dear our mother, nor son nor brother is thine, as strong or as fair of face.

How shall thou be abased? or how shall fear take hold of thy heart? of thine,

England, maiden immortal, laden with charge of life and with hopes divine?

Earth shall wither, when eyes turned hither behold not light in her darkness shine.

England, none that is born thy son, and lives, by grace of thy glory, free,

Lives and yearns not at heart and burns with hope to serve as he worships thee;

None may sing thee: the sea-wind's wing beats down our songs as it hails the sea.

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

XCV

A JACOBITE'S EXILE

(1746)

THE weary day rins down and dies,
The weary night wears through:
And never an hour is fair wi' flower,
And never a flower wi' dew.

I would the day were night for me,
I would the night were day:

For then would I stand in my ain fair land,
As now in dreams I may.

O lordly flow the Loire and Seine,
And loud the dark Durance :
But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne
Than a' the fields of France;

And the waves of Till that speak sae still
Gleam goodlier where they glance.

O weel were they that fell fighting
On dark Drumossie's day:

They keep their hame ayont the faem
And we die far away.

O sound they sleep, and saft, and deep,
But night and day wake we;
And ever between the sea-banks green
Sounds loud the sundering sea.

And ill we sleep, sae sair we weep,

But sweet and fast sleep they;

And the mool that haps them roun' and laps them Is e'en their country's clay;

But the land we tread that are not dead

Is strange as night by day.

Strange as night in a strange man's sight,
Though fair as dawn it be:

For what is here that a stranger's cheer
Should yet wax blithe to see?

The hills stand steep, the dells lie deep,
The fields are green and gold:

The hill-streams sing, and the hill-sides ring,
As ours at home of old.

But hills and flowers are nane of ours,

And ours are over sea:

And the kind strange land whereon we stand,
It wotsna what were we

Or ever we came, wi' scathe and shame,

To try what end might be.

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