Trafalgar Day

Sea, that art ours as we are thine, whose name     Is one with England's even as light with flame,     Dost thou as we, thy chosen of all men, know     This day of days when death gave life to fame?     Dost thou not kindle above and thrill below     With rapturous record, with memorial glow,     Remembering this thy festal day of fight,     And all the joy it gave, and all the woe?     Never since day broke flowerlike forth of night     Broke such a dawn of battle. Death in sight     Made of the man whose life was like the sun     A man more godlike than the lord of light.     There is none like him, and there shall be none.     When England bears again as great a son,     He can but follow fame where Nelson led.     There is not and there cannot be but one.     As earth has but one England, crown and head     Of all her glories till the sun be dead,     Supreme in peace and war, supreme in song,     Supreme in freedom, since her rede was read,     [Pg 339]Since first the soul that gave her speech grew strong     To help the right and heal the wild world's wrong,     So she hath but one royal Nelson, born     To reign on time above the years that throng.     The music of his name puts fear to scorn,     And thrills our twilight through with sense of morn:     As England was, how should not England be?     No tempest yet has left her banner torn.     No year has yet put out the day when he     Who lived and died to keep our kingship free     Wherever seas by warring winds are worn     Died, and was one with England and the sea.