Britain's Destiny

Southland Times, Issue 11842, 16 September 1891, Page 4

Britain's Destiny

We are the Choice of the Will : God, when Her gave the word That called ns into line, set in our hand a eword ; Bet us a sword to wield none else conld lift and draw, And bade ns *orta to the sound of the trnmpet of the hi w. East and weat and north, wherever the battle grew, As men to a feast we flockei, the work of the Will to do. Bost upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease— (Had we hacked it to the Pit, wo had lsft it in a place of peace !) — Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will; our sire. Boad was never so roughfthat we left its purpose dark; Btark was erer the sea, bnt onr ships were yet more stark ; We tracked the winds of the world to the roots of their very thrones : The Becret parts of the world were salted with onr bones ; Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of the northern night ; And the call of her morning drom goes in a girdle of sound, Like th« voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round ; And the shadow of her flag, when it bUbs to the mother-breeze, floats from shore to shore of the universal seas; And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flower?, And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers. Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of ns fade and die, While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky ? For the sire lives in his eons, and they pay their father's debt, And tb . Lion has left a whelp wherever his daw wae set. And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that nore shall brave, Is but less Btrong than Time and the all-devour-ing Grave 1 W. E. Hekxey.