NELSON'S YEAR

“Hasten the Kingdom, England!”

This year, a hundred years ago,

The world attended, breathless, on the gathering pomp of war,

While England and her deathless dead, with all their mighty hearts aglow,

Swept onward like the dawn of doom to triumph at Trafalgar;

Then the world was hushed to wonder

As the cannon's dying thunder

Broke out again in muffled peals across the heaving sea,

And home the Victor came at last,

Home, home, with England's flag half-mast,

That never dipped to foe before, on Nelson's Victory.

God gave this year to England;

And what He gives He takes again;

He gives us life, He gives us death: our victories have wings;

He gives us love and in its heart He hides the whole world's heart of pain:

We gain by loss: impartially the eternal balance swings!

Ay; in the fire we cherish

Our thoughts and dreams may perish;

Yet shall it burn for England's sake triumphant as of old!

What sacrifice could gain for her

Our own shall still maintain for her,

And hold the gates of Freedom wide that take no keys of gold.

God gave this year to England;

Her eyes are far too bright for tears

Of sorrow; by her silent dead she kneels, too proud for pride;

Their blood, their love, have bought her right to claim the new imperial years

In England's name for Freedom, in whose love her children died;

In whose love, though hope may dwindle,

Love and brotherhood shall kindle

Between the striving nations as a choral song takes fire,

Till new hope, new faith, new wonder

Cleave the clouds of doubt asunder,

And speed the union of mankind in one divine desire.

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

This year across the listening world

There came a sound of mingled tears where victory and defeat

Clasped hands; and Peace — among the dead — stood wistfully, with white wings furled,

Knowing the strife was idle; for the night and morning meet,

Yet there is no disunion

In heaven's divine communion

As through the gates of twilight the harmonious morning pours;

Ah, God speed that grander morrow

When the world's divinest sorrow

Shall show how Love stands knocking at the world's unopened doors.

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

Look up across the narrow seas,

Across the great white nations to thy dark imperial throne

Where now three hundred million souls attend on thine august decrees;

Ah, bow thine head in humbleness, the Kingdom is thine own:

Not for the pride or power

God gave thee this in dower;

But, now the West and East have met and wept their mortal loss,

Now that their tears have spoken

And the long dumb spell is broken,

Is it nothing that thy banner bears the red eternal cross?

Ay! Lift the flag of England;

And lo, that Eastern cross is there,

Veiled with a hundred meanings as our English eyes are veiled;

Yet to the grander dawn we move oblivious of the sign we bear,

Oblivious of the heights we climb until the last be scaled;

Then with all the earth before us

And the great cross floating o'er us

We shall break the sword we forged of old, so weak we were and blind;

While the inviolate heaven discloses

England's Rose of all the roses

Dawning wide and ever wider o'er the kingdom of mankind.

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

For then all nations shall be one;

One as the ordered stars are one that sing upon their way,

One with the rhythmic glories of the swinging sea and the rolling sun,

One with the flow of life and death, the tides of night and day;

One with all dreams of beauty,

One with all laws of duty;

One with the weak and helpless while the one sky burns above;

Till eyes by tears made glorious

Look up at last victorious,

And lips that starved break open in one song of life and love.

Hasten the Kingdom, England;

And when the Spring returns again

Rekindle in our English hearts the universal Spring,

That we may wait in faith upon the former and the latter rain,

Till all waste places burgeon and the wildernesses sing;

Pour the glory of thy pity

Through the dark and troubled city;

Pour the splendour of thy beauty over wood and meadow fair;

May the God of battles guide thee

And the Christ-child walk beside thee

With a word of peace for England in the dawn of Nelson's Year.