flame,
Took fire from the dawn of the fierce July when fleets were
scattered as foam
And squadrons as flakes of spray; when galleon and galliass that
shadowed the sea
Were swept from her waves like shadows that pass with the clouds
they fell from, and she
Laughed loud to the wind as it gave to her keeping the glories of
Spain and Rome.

III

Three hundred summers have fallen as leaves by the storms in their
season thinned,
Since northward the war-ships of Spain came sheer up the way of the
south-west wind:
Where the citadel cliffs of England are flanked with bastions of
serpentine,
Far off to the windward loomed their hulls, an hundred and
twenty-nine,
All filled full of the war, full-fraught with battle and charged
with bale;
Then store-ships weighted with cannon; and all were an hundred and
fifty sail.
The measureless menace of darkness anhungered with hope to prevail
upon light,
The shadow of death made substance, the present and visible spirit
of night,
Came, shaped as a waxing or waning moon that rose with the fall of
day,
To the channel where couches the Lion in guard of the gate of the
lustrous bay.
Fair England, sweet as the sea that shields her, and pure as the
sea from stain,
Smiled, hearing hardly for scorn that stirred her the menace of
saintly Spain.

III

I

"They that ride over ocean wide with hempen bridle and horse of
tree,"
How shall they in the darkening day of wrath and anguish and fear
go free?
How shall these that have curbed the seas not feel his bridle who
made the sea?

God shall bow them and break them now: for what is man in the Lord
God's sight?
Fear shall shake them, and shame shall break, and all the noon of
their pride be night:
These that sinned shall the ravening wind of doom bring under, and
judgment smite.

England broke from her neck the yoke, and rent the fetter, and
mocked the rod:
Shrines of old that she decked with gold she turned to dust, to the
dust she trod:
What is she, that the wind and sea should fight beside her, and war
with God?