| |
| SEE you the ferny ride that steals | |
| Into the oak-woods far? | |
| O that was whence they hewed the keels | |
| That rolled to Trafalgar. | |
| |
| And mark you where the ivy clings | 5 |
| To Bayham’s mouldering walls? | |
| O there we cast the stout railings | |
| That stand around St. Paul’s. | |
| |
| See you the dimpled track that runs | |
| All hollow through the wheat? | 10 |
| O that was where they hauled the guns | |
| That smote King Philip’s fleet. | |
| |
| (Out of the Weald, the secret Weald, | |
| Men sent in ancient years, | |
| The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field, | 15 |
| The arrows at Poitiers!) | |
| |
| See you our little mill that clacks, | |
| So busy by the brook? | |
| She has ground her corn and paid her tax | |
| Ever since Domesday Book. | 20 |
| |
| See you our stilly woods of oak, | |
| And the dread ditch beside? | |
| O that was where the Saxons broke | |
| On the day that Harold died. | |
| |
| See you the windy levels spread | 25 |
| About the gates of Rye? | |
| O that was where the Northmen fled, | |
| When Alfred’s ships came by. | |
| |
| See you our pastures wide and lone, | |
| Where the red oxen browse? | 30 |
| O there was a City thronged and known, | |
| Ere London boasted a house. | |
| |
| And see you, after rain, the trace | |
| Of mound and ditch and wall? | |
| O that was a Legion’s camping-place, | 35 |
| When Cæsar sailed from Gaul. | |
| |
| And see you marks that show and fade, | |
| Like shadows on the Downs? | |
| O they are the lines the Flint Men made, | |
| To guard their wondrous towns. | 40 |
| |
| Trackway and Camp and City lost, | |
| Salt Marsh where now is corn— | |
| Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, | |
| And so was England born! | |
| |
| She is not any common Earth, | 45 |
| Water or wood or air, | |
| But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye, | |
| Where you and I will fare! | |
| |
