Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold, Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?
Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men; Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day;
Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash Rings the Follow! Follow ! and the boughs begin to crash; The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly; And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.
Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves
Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves: Calling as he used to call, faint and far away, In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
I waited for the train at Coventry:
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this:-
Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, And loathed to see them overtaxed; but she Did more, and underwent, and overcame, The woman of a thousand summers back, Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled In Coventry; for when he laid a tax Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!" She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone,
His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, And prayed him, "If they pay this tax, they starve." Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,
"You would not let your little finger ache
For such as these?"-"But I would die," said she. He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul: Then filliped at the diamond in her ear: "O, ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-"Alas!" she said, "But prove me what it is I would not do." And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answered, "Ride you naked through the town, And I repeal it"; and, nodding, as in scorn, He parted, with great strides among his dogs. So left alone, the passions of her mind, As winds from all the compass shift and blow, Made war upon each other for an hour, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all The hard condition, but that she would loose The people; therefore, as they loved her well, From then till noon no foot should pace the street, No eye look down, she passing, but that all Should keep within, door shut, and window barred. Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath She lingered, looking like a summer moon Half-dipped in cloud. Anon she shook her head, And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee; Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapped In purple blazoned with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: The deep air listened round her as she rode, And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field Gleam through the Gothic archway in the wall.
Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity: And one low churl, compact of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peeped-but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,
And dropped before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancelled a sense misused;
And she, that knew not, passed; and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers,
One after one; but even then she gained
Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.
Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]
THE sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT, the tidal isle, In May with daffodils and lilies
Is kirtled gorgeously a while
As ne'er another English hill is:
About the precipices cling
The rich renascence robes of Spring.
Her gold and silver, nature's gifts,
The prodigal with both hands showers;
O not in patches, not in drifts
But round and round a mount of flowers
Of lilies and of daffodils,
The envy of all other hills.
And on the lofty summit looms
The castle: None could build or plan it. The four-square foliage springs and blooms, The piled elaborate flower of granite, That not the sun can wither; no,
Nor any tempest overthrow.
John Davidson [1857-1909]
COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1802
EARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!
William Wordsworth [1770-1850]
FLEET STREET! Fleet Street! Fleet Street in the morning, With the old sun laughing out behind the dome of Paul's,
Heavy wains a-driving, merry winds a-striving,
White clouds and blue sky above the smoke-stained
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