Death's red gates and Time's grey prison
They burst, elect from battle, tried and true.

But now Death mocks at youth and love and glory,
Chivalry slinks behind his loaded mines,
With meaner murderous lips War tells her story,
And round her cunning brows no laurel shines.

And here to us the eternal charge is given
To rise and make our low world touch God's high:
To hasten God's own kingdom, Man's own heaven,
And teach Love's grander army how to die.

No kingdom then, no long-continuing city
Shall e'er again be stablished by the sword;
No blood-bought throne defy the powers of pity,
No despot's crown outweigh one helot's word.

Imperial England, breathe thy marching orders:
The great host waits; the end, the end is close,
When earth shall know thy peace in all her borders,
And all her deserts blossom with thy Rose.

Princedoms and peoples rise and flash and perish
As the dew passes from the flowering thorn;
Yet the one Kingdom that our dreams still cherish
Lives in a light that blinds the world's red morn.

Hasten the Kingdom, England, the days darken;
We would not have thee slacken watch or ward,
Nor doff thine armour till the whole world hearken,
Nor till Time bid thee lay aside the sword.

Hasten the Kingdom; hamlet, heath, and city,
We are all at war, one bleeding bulk of pain;
Little we know; but one thing--by God's pity--
We know, and know all else on earth is vain.

We know not yet how much we dare, how little;
We dare not dream of peace; yet, as at need,
England, God help thee, let no jot or tittle
Of Love's last law go past thee without heed.

_Who saves his life shall lose it!_ The great ages
Bear witness--Rome and Babylon and Tyre
Cry from the dust-stopped lips of all their sages,--
There is no hope if man can climb no higher.

England, by God's grace set apart to ponder
A little while from battle, ah, take heed,
Keep watch, keep watch, beside thy sleeping thunder;
Call down Christ's pity while those others bleed;

Waken the God within thee, while the sorrow
Of battle surges round a distant shore,
While Time is thine, lest on some deadly morrow
The moving finger write--_but thine no more_.

Little we know--but though the advancing aeons
Win every painful s