Il Santo

    Alas! alas! what impious hands are these?
    They have cut down my dark mysterious trees,
    Defied the brooding spell
    That sealed my sacred well,
    Broken my fathers' fixed and ancient bars,
    And on the mouldering shade
    Wherein my dead were laid
    Let in the cold clear aspect of the stars.

    Slumber hath held the grove for years untold:
    Is there no reverence for a peace so old?
    Is there no seemly awe
    For bronze-engraven law,
    For dust beatified and saintly name?
    When they shall see the shrine
    Princes have held divine,
    Will they not bow before the eternal flame?

    Vain! vain! the wind of heaven for ages long
    Hath whispered manhood, "Let thine arm be strong!
    Hew down and fling away
    The growth that veils decay,

    Shatter the shrine that chokes the living spring.
    Scorn hatred, scorn regret,
    Dig deep and deeper yet,
    Leave not the quest for word of saint or king.

    "Dig deeper yet! though the world brand thee now,
    The faithful labour of an impious brow
    May for thy race redeem
    The source of that lost stream
    Once given the thirst of all the earth to slake.
    Nay, thou too ere the end
    Thy weary knee mayst bend
    And in thy trembling hands that water take."

Henry John Newbolt

Sir Henry John Newbolt was an English poet and author, famous for his ballads such as 'Vitaï Lampada'. He graduated from Oxford and was called to the bar, but he is better remembered for his literary contributions than his legal career. Newbolt served as a government advisor on military and naval literature during World War I. He was knighted in 1915 for his services to literature. Newbolt's work often reflected themes of patriotism and duty.

Henry John Newbolt

Victoria Regina

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Fighting Téméraire

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Guides at Cabul

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

When I Remember

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

A Man And His Image

All day the nations climb and crawl and pray
In one long pilgrimage to one white shrine,
Where sleeps a saint whose pardon, like his peace,
Is wide as death, as common, as divine.

His statue in an aureole fills the shrine,
The reckless nightingale, the roaming fawn,
Share the broad blessing of his lifted hands,
Under the canopy, above the lawn.

But one strange night, a night of gale and flood,
A sound came louder than the wild wind's tone;
The grave-gates shook and opened: and one stood
Blue in the moonlight, rotten to the bone.

Then on the statue, graven with holy smiles,
There came another smile--tremendous--one
Of an Egyptian god. 'Why should you rise?
'Do I not guard your secret from the sun?

The nations come; they kneel among the f...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church Rome

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews, sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well,
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
Whats done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the worlds a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
Do I live, am I dead? Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxeds ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from...

Robert Browning

O Pulchritudo

O Saint whose thousand shrines our feet have trod
    And our eyes loved thy lamp's eternal beam,
Dim earthly radiance of the Unknown God,
    Hope of the darkness, light of them that dream,
Far off, far off and faint, O glimmer on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.

O Word whose meaning every sense hath sought,
    Voice of the teeming field and grassy mound,
Deep-whispering fountain of the wells of thought,
    Will of the wind and soul of all sweet sound,
Far off, far off and faint, O murmur on
Till we thy pilgrims from the road are gone.

Henry John Newbolt

Tree-Worship - (To John Lane)

Vast and mysterious brother, ere was yet of me
    So much as men may poise upon a needle's end,
Still shook with laughter all this monstrous might of thee,
    And still with haughty crest it called the morning friend.

Thy latticed column jetted up the bright blue air,
    Tall as a mast it was, and stronger than a tower;
Three hundred winters had beheld thee mighty there,
    Before my little life had lived one little hour.

With rocky foot stern-set like iron in the land,
    With leafy rustling crest the morning sows with pearls,
Huge as a minster, half in heaven men saw thee stand,
    Thy rugged girth the waists of fifty Eastern girls.

Knotted and warted, slabbed and armoured like the hide
    Of tropic elephant; unstormable and steep
As some grim...

Richard Le Gallienne

To An Old Oak.

        Immota manet; multosque nepotes,
    Multa virûm volvens durando sæcula, vincit.    VIRG.

Round thee, alas, no shadows move!
From thee no sacred murmurs breathe!
Yet within thee, thyself a grove,
Once did the eagle scream above,
    And the wolf howl beneath.

There once the steel-clad knight reclin'd,
His sable plumage tempest-toss'd;
And, as the death-bell smote the wind,
From towers long fled by human kind,
    His brow the hero cross'd!

Then Culture came, and days serene,
And village-sports, and garlands gay.
Full many a pathway cross'd the green;
And maids and shepherd-youths were seen,
    To celebrate the May.

Father of many a forest deep,
(Whence many a navy thunder-fraught)
Erst in their acorn-cells asleep...

Samuel Rogers

An Ode To The Hills

'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' - PSALM CXXI. 1.


Æons ago ye were,
Before the struggling changeful race of man
Wrought into being, ere the tragic stir
Of human toil and deep desire began:
So shall ye still remain,
Lords of an elder and immutable race,
When many a broad metropolis of the plain,
Or thronging port by some renownèd shore,
Is sunk in nameless ruin, and its place
Recalled no more.

Empires have come and gone,
And glorious cities fallen in their prime;
Divine, far-echoing, names once writ in stone
Have vanished in the dust and void of time;
But ye, firm-set, secure,
Like Treasure in the hardness of God's palm,
Are yet the same for ever; ye endure
By virtue of an old slow-ripening word,...

Archibald Lampman