Alfred’s Song
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.
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poem by Alfred Austin
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