England's Answer by Rudyard Kipling — Read

Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban; / Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man. / Flesh of the flesh that I bred, bone of the bone that I bare; / Stark as your sons shall be -- stern as your fathers were. / Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our tether, / But we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come together. / My arm is nothing weak, my strength is not gone by; / Sons, I have borne many sons, but my dugs are not dry. / Look, I have made ye a place and opened wide the doors, / That ye may talk together, your Barons and Councillors -- / Wards of the Outer March, Lords of the Lower Seas, / Ay, talk to your gray mother that bore you on her knees! -- / That ye may talk together, brother to brother's face -- / Thus for the good of your peoples -- thus for the Pride of the Race. / Also, we will make promise. So long as The Blood endures, / I shall know that your good is mine: ye shall feel that my strength is yours: / In the day of Armageddon, at the last great fight of all, / That Our House stand together and the pillars do not fall. / Draw now the threefold knot firm on the ninefold bands, / And the Law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands. / This for the waxen Heath, and that for the Wattle-bloom, / This for the Maple-leaf, and that for the southern Broom. / The Law that ye make shall be law and I do not press my will, / Because ye are Sons of The Blood and call me Mother still.

Now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you, / After the use of the English, in straight-flung words and few. / Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, / Balking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise. / Stand to your work and be wise -- certain of sword and pen, / Who are neither children nor Gods, but men in a world of men!