Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III by Algernon Charles Swinburne
page 31 of 126 (24%)
page 31 of 126 (24%)
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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? Lo, the cloud of his ships that crowd her channel's inlet with storm sublime, Darker far than the tempests are that sweep the skies of her northmost clime; Huge and dense as the walls that fence the secret darkness of unknown time. Mast on mast as a tower goes past, and sail by sail as a cloud's wing spread; Fleet by fleet, as the throngs whose feet keep time with death in his dance of dread; Galleons dark as the helmsman's bark of old that ferried to hell |
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