The Viking's Song

When I thy lover first
    Shook out my canvas free
And like a pirate burst
    Into that dreaming sea,
The land knew no such thirst
    As then tormented me.

Now when at eve returned
    I near that shore divine,
Where once but watch-fires burned
    I see thy beacon shine,
And know the land hath learned
    Desire that welcomes mine.

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

Gold

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

Sráhmandázi*

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

The Echo

Henry John Newbolt, Simple Poetry

Fidele's Grassy Tomb

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.

Devon

    Deep-wooded combes, clear-mounded hills of morn,
        Red sunset tides against a red sea-wall,
        High lonely barrows where the curlews call,
    Far moors that echo to the ringing horn,--
    Devon! thou spirit of all these beauties born,
        All these are thine, but thou art more than all:
        Speech can but tell thy name, praise can but fall
    Beneath the cold white sea-mist of thy scorn.

    Yet, yet, O noble land, forbid us not
        Even now to join our faint memorial chime
    To the fierce chant wherewith their hearts were hot
        Who took the tide in thy Imperial prime;
    Whose glory's thine till Glory sleeps forgot
        With her ancestral phantoms, Pride and Time.

Henry John Newbolt

Cadland,[1] Southampton River.

If ever sea-maid, from her coral cave,
Beneath the hum of the great surge, has loved
To pass delighted from her green abode,
And, seated on a summer bank, to sing
No earthly music; in a spot like this,
The bard might feign he heard her, as she dried
Her golden hair, yet dripping from the main,
In the slant sunbeam.
So the pensive bard
Might image, warmed by this enchanting scene,
The ideal form; but though such things are not,
He who has ever felt a thought refined;
He who has wandered on the sea of life,
Forming delightful visions of a home
Of beauty and repose; he who has loved,
With filial warmth his country, will not pass
Without a look of more than tenderness
On all the scene; from where the pensile birch
Bends on the bank, amid the clustered gr...

William Lisle Bowles

Calais Sands

A thousand knights have reind their steeds
To watch this line of sand-hills run,
Along the never silent Strait,
To Calais glittering in the sun:

To look toward Ardres Golden Field
Across this wide aërial plain,
Which glows as if the Middle Age
Were gorgeous upon earth again.

Oh, that to share this famous scene
I saw, upon the open sand,
Thy lovely presence at my side,
Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand!

How exquisite thy voice would come,
My darling, on this lonely air!
How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze
Shake loose some lock of soft brown hair!

But now my glance but once hath roved
Oer Calais and its famous plain;
To Englands cliffs my gaze is turnd,
Oer the blue Strait mine eyes I strain.

Thou...

Matthew Arnold

Amore Altiero

    Since thou and I have wandered from the highway
        And found with hearts reborn
    This swift and unimaginable byway
        Unto the hills of morn,
    Shall not our love disdain the unworthy uses
        Of the old time outworn?

    I'll not entreat thy half unwilling graces
        With humbly folded palms,
    Nor seek to shake thy proud defended places
        With noise of vague alarms,
    Nor ask against my fortune's grim pursuing
        The refuge of thy arms.

    Thou'lt not withhold for pleasure vain and cruel
        That which has long been mine,
    Nor overheap with briefly burning fuel
        A fire of flame divine,
    Nor yield the key for life's profaner voices
        To brawl within the shrine.

Henry John Newbolt

How The Mead-Slave Was Set Free

        Nay, move not! Sit just as you are,
        Under the carved wings of the chair.
        The hearth-glow sifting through your hair
        Turns every dim pearl to a star
        Dawn-drowned in floods of brightening air.

        I have been thinking of that night
        When all the wide hall burst to blaze
        With spears caught up, thrust fifty ways
        To find my throat, while I lay white
        And sick with joy, to think the days

        I dragged out in your hateful North--
        A slave, constrained at banquet's need
        To fill the black bull's horns with mead
        For drunken sea-thieves--were henceforth
        Cast from me as a poison weed,

        While Death thrust roses in my hands!
        But you, w...

William Vaughn Moody

A Ballad at Parting

Sea to sea that clasps and fosters England, uttering ever-more
Song eterne and praise immortal of the indomitable shore,
Lifts aloud her constant heart up, south to north and east to west,
Here in speech that shames all music, there in thunder-throated roar,
Chiming concord out of discord, waking rapture out of rest.
All her ways are lovely, all her works and symbols are divine,
Yet shall man love best what first bade leap his heart and bend his knee;
Yet where first his whole soul worshipped shall his soul set up her shrine:
Nor may love not know the lovelier, fair as both beheld may be,
Here the limitless north-eastern, there the strait south-western sea.
Though their chant bear all one burden, as ere man was born it bore;
Though the burden be diviner than the songs all souls adore;...

Algernon Charles Swinburne