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Alfred Austin - Alfred’s Song
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In the Beginning when, out of darkness,
 The Earth, the Heaven,
 The stars, the seasons,
 The mighty mainland,
 And whale—ploughed water,
 By God the Maker
 Were formed and fashioned,
 Then God made England.

 He made it shapely,
 With land—locked inlets,
 And gray—green nesses;
 With rivers roaming
 From fair—leafed forests
 Through windless valleys,
 Past plain and pasture,
 To sloping shingle:
 Thus God made England.

 Then like to the long—backed bounding billows,
 That foam and follow
 In rolling ridges,
 Before and after,
 To bluff and headland,
 Hither there tided
 The loose—limbed Briton,
 The lording Roman,
 And strong on his oars the sea—borne Saxon,
 And now the Norsemen
 Who hard with Alfred
 Wrestle for England.

 But onward and forward,
 In far days fairer,
 I see this England
 Made one and mighty:
 Mighty and master
 Of all within it.
 Mighty and master
 Of men high—seated,
 Of free—necked labour,
 Lowland and upland,
 And corn and cattle,
 And ploughland peaceful,
 Of happy homesteads
 That warmly nestle
 In holt and hollow.
 This is the England,
 In fair days forward,
 I see and sing of.

 Then, mighty and master of all within her,
 Of Celt and Briton,
 Angle and Frisian,
 Saxon and Norseman,
 Shall England plough, like the whale and walrus,
 The roaring ridges
 Of foam—necked water,
 With long—oared warships
 And keels high—beakëd;
 And never a foeman,
 Eastward or westward,
 Shall dare to raven
 Her salt—sea inlets,
 Her grim gray nesses,
 But, swift at the sight of her rearing cradles,
 Shall scud and scatter,
 Like wild geese fleeing
 `Twixt wave and welkin,
 Away from the dread of the shrilling weapons
 Of foam—fenced England!
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