And stranger, ever stranger, grew the night...

And stranger, ever stranger, grew the night

Around those twain, for whom the fleecy moon

Was but a mightier Cleopatra's pearl

Dissolving in the rich dark wine of night,

While‘ mid the tenderer talk of eyes and hands

And whispered nothings, his great ocean realm

Rolled round their gloomy barge, robing its hulk

With splendours Rome and Egypt never knew.

Old ocean was his Nile, his mighty queen

An English maiden purer than the dawn,

His cause the cause of Freedom, his reward

The glory of England. Strangely simple, then,

Simple as life and death, anguish and love,

To Bess appeared those mighty dawning dreams,

Whereby he shaped the pageant of the world

To a new purpose, strangely simple all

Those great new waking tides i’ the world's great soul

That set towards the fall of tyranny

Behind a thunderous roar of ocean triumph

O'er burning ships and shattered fleets, while England

Grasped with sure hands the sceptre of the sea,

That untamed realm of Liberty which none

Had looked upon as aught but wilderness

Ere this, or even dreamed of as the seat

Of power and judgment and high sovereignty

Whereby all nations at the last should make

One brotherhood, and war should be no more.

And ever, as the vision broadened out,

The sense of some tremendous change at hand,

The approach of vast Armadas and the dawn

Of battle, reddening the diviner dawn

With clouds, confused it, till once more the song

Rang out triumphant o'er the glittering sea.