Sir Henry Newbolt

In seventeen hundred and fifty-nine, When Hawke came swooping from the West,
The French King's Admiral with twenty of the line, Was sailing forth to sack us, out of Brest.
The ports of France were crowded, the quays of France
With…

Our game was his but yesteryear;
We wished him back; we could not know The self-same hour we missed him here He led the line that broke the foe.
Blood-red behind our guarded posts Sank as of old and dying day;
The battle ceased;…

England! where the sacred flame
Burns before the inmost shrine,
Where the lips that love thy name
Consecrate their hopes and thine

In The Time Of War And TumultsO Lord Almighty,
Thou whose hands  Despair and victory give;
In whom, though tyrants tread their lands,  The souls of nations live;
Thou wilt not turn Thy face away  From those who work Thy will,

Down thy valleys,
Ireland,
Ireland, Down thy valleys green and sad, Still thy spirit wanders wailing, Wanders wailing, wanders mad. Long ago that anguish took thee, Ireland,
Ireland, green and fair, Spoilers strong in darkness took…

Ye have robb’d,’ said he, ‘ye have slaughter’d and made an end, Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead:
What will ye more of your guest and sometime friend?’ ‘Blood for our blood,’ they said.
He laugh’d: ‘If one may settle the…

O living pictures of the dead,
O songs without a sound,
O fellowship whose phantom tread Hallows a phantom ground — How in a gleam have these revealed The faith we had not found.
We have sought God in a cloudy Heaven

Mother, with unbowed head
Hear thou across the sea
The farewell of the dead,
The dead who died for thee.

(A Ballad of the Bold Menelaus)It was morning at St.
Helen's, in the great and gallant days, And the sea beneath the sun glittered wide,
When the frigate set her courses, all a-shimmer in the haze And she hauled her cable home and took…

Praise thou with praise unending, The Master of the Wine;
To all their portions sending Himself he mingled thine:
The sea-born flush of morning, The sea-born hush of night,
The East wind comfort scorning, And the North wind driving…

Riding at dawn, riding alone, Gillespie left the town behind;
Before he turned by the Westward road A horseman crossed him, staggering blind."The Devil's abroad in false Vellore, The Devil that stabs by night," he said,"Women…

Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand miles away, (Capten, art tha sleepin' there below?) Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An' dreamin' arl the time O' Plymouth Hoe.
Yarnder lumes the Island, yarnder lie the…

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night — Ten to make and the match to win — A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a…