Athens, set and framed in silver sea,
Did not dream a dream of England--England of the years to be!
Friend of fathers like to Plato--bards august and hallowed seers--
Did not see that tenfold glory, Britain of the future years!
Spirit filled with Grecian music, songs that charm the dark away,
On that large, supreme occasion, did not note diviner lay--
Did not hear the voice of Shakespeare--all the mighty life was still,
Down the slopes that dipped to seaward, on the shoulders of the hill;
But the gold and green were brighter than the bloom of Thracian springs,
And a strange, surpassing beauty shone upon the face of things.

In a grave that no man thinks of--back from far-forgotten bays--
Sleeps the grey, wind-beaten sailor of the old exalted days.
He that coasted Wales and Dover, he that first saw Sussex plains,
Passed away with head unlaurelled in the wild Thessalian rains.
In a space by hand untended, by a fen of vapours blind,
Lies the king of many waters--out of sight and out of mind!
No one brings the yearly blossom--no one culls the flower of grace,
For the shell of mighty father buried in that lonely place;
But the winds are low and holy, and the songs of sweetness flow,
Where he fell asleep for ever, twenty centuries ago.

Bill the Bullock-Driver

The leaders of millions, the lords of the lands,
Who sway the wide world with their will
And shake the great globe with the strength of their hands,
Flash past us--unnoticed by Bill.

The elders of science who measure the spheres
And weigh the vast bulk of the sun--
Who see the grand lights beyond aeons of years,
Are less than a bullock to _one_.

The singers that sweeten all time with their song--
Pure voices that make us forget
Humanity's drama of marvellous wrong--
To Bill are as mysteries yet.

By thunders of battle and nations uphurled,
Bill's sympathies never were stirred:
The helmsmen who stand at the wheel of the world
By him are unknown and unheard.

What trouble has Bill for the ruin of lands,
Or the quarrels of temple and throne,
So long as the whip that he holds in his hands
And the team that he drives are his own?

As straight and as sound as a slab without crack,
Our Bill is a king in his way;
Though he camps by the side of a shingle track,
And sleeps on the bed of his dray.

A whip-lash