’But democracy means dissolution: 
  See, laden with clamour and crime,
How the darkness of dim revolution
  Comes deepening the twilight of time! 
      Ah, better the fetter
        That holds the poor man’s hand
      Than peril of sterile
        Blind change that wastes the land.

’Gaze forward through clouds that environ;
  It shall be as it was in the past. 
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
  Shall a nation be moulded to last.’ 
      So teach they, so preach they,
        Who dream themselves the dream
      That hallows the gallows
        And bids the scaffold stream.

’With a hero at head, and a nation
  Well gagged and well drilled and well cowed,
And a gospel of war and damnation,
  Has not empire a right to be proud? 
      Fools prattle and tattle
        Of freedom, reason, right,
      The beauty of duty,
        The loveliness of light.

’But we know, we believe it, we see it,
  Force only has power upon earth.’ 
So be it! and ever so be it
  For souls that are bestial by birth! 
      Let Prussian with Russian
        Exchange the kiss of slaves: 
      But sea-folk are free folk
        By grace of winds and waves.

Has the past from the sepulchres beckoned? 
  Let answer from Englishmen be—­
No man shall be lord of us reckoned
  Who is baser, not better, than we. 
      No coward, empowered
        To soil a brave man’s name;
      For shame’s sake and fame’s sake,
        Enough of fame and shame.

Fame needs not the golden addition;
  Shame bears it abroad as a brand. 
Let the deed, and no more the tradition,
  Speak out and be heard through the land. 
      Pride, rootless and fruitless,
        No longer takes and gives: 
      But surer and purer
        The soul of England lives.

He is master and lord of his brothers
  Who is worthier and wiser than they. 
Him only, him surely, shall others,
  Else equal, observe and obey. 
      Truth, flawless and awless,
        Do falsehood what it can,
      Makes royal the loyal
        And simple heart of man.

Who are these, then, that England should hearken,
  Who rage and wax wroth and grow pale
If she turn from the sunsets that darken
  And her ship for the morning set sail? 
      Let strangers fear dangers: 
        All know, that hold her dear,
      Dishonour upon her
        Can only fall through fear.

Men, born of the landsmen and seamen
  Who served her with souls and with swords,
She bids you be brothers, and free men,
  And lordless, and fearless of lords. 
      She cares not, she dares not
        Care now for gold or steel: 
      Light lead her, truth speed her,
        God save the Commonweal!

A WORD FOR THE NATION.