<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">To England, Our Mother</h1><h1 align="center" class="head"><span class="smallcaps">A Hymn of Loyalty</span></h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line"><span class="smallcaps">We</span> are your children, O Mother,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">And tried by your testing, but true;</p><p class="line">Sealed of your sign and none other;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Soul of the soul that is you;</p><p class="line">Yours from the past, for the morrow;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Leal at your travail we bow,</p><p class="line">Mother made perfect by sorrow,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">With the pain-splendid brow.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Yours was our freedom that blamed you,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Our right that was wind to our hate</p><p class="line">Yours, and the swift wrath that named you.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Mother, we love, -- and we wait.</p><p class="line">We that you favored or slighted,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Mother, are all of us peers</p><p class="line">In our will that your wrong shall be righted,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">In our love at the sight of your tears.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Ah, deep in our hearts is the sweetness</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Of your fields where as infants we trod,</p><p class="line">When our ills were as swallows for fleetness,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">In the green-curtained play-grounds of God.</p><p class="line">Fond days that are joys mid our weeping</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Are set mid your meadows and bowers;</p><p class="line">Our loves that lie dead in your keeping</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">You fondle with grass and with flowers.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Ah, yours was the beauty that blessed us;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">The kiss when our troubles were dumb;</p><p class="line">The hand that in childhood caressed us --</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Oh, Mother! you need us. We come!</p><p class="line">Love-gifts from our hell or our heaven</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Take, take them and purge with your pain;</p><p class="line">All, all our love's best take, and leaven</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Our life till 'tis lovely again, --</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And true to your height, Mother, tender</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">And true to the best in us all!</p><p class="line">We have pined here alone in your splendor;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">But we speed to your pain lest you fall.</p><p class="line">Ask: we give! Is it life or the other?</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Is it death? Take us whole. We are come</p><p class="line">For the sake of our dream of you, Mother,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Whose love we have longed for at home!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Oh, Lord of our fathers before us,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">We have turned from the light of Thy word,</p><p class="line">We and this Mother who bore us:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Dread God, we were proud: we have erred.</p><p class="line">We plead: on ourselves, not our brother,</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Lay now the stern weight of Thy rod;</p><p class="line">Grind us small with Thy grief; -- but our Mother</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:5%">Spare, spare her, O God!</p></div><p class="byline">-- James A. Mackereth.</p></body></html> · Great War