Explore "The Fourth of August" by Various on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Now in thy splendour go before us, / Spirit of England, ardent-eyed! / Enkindle this dear earth that bore us, / In the hour of peril purified.
The cares we hugged drop out of vision, / Our hearts with deeper thoughts dilate. / We step from days of sour division / Into the grandeur of our fate.
For us the glorious dead have striven; / They battled that we might be free. / We to that living cause are given, / We arm for men that are to be.
Among the nations nobliest chartered, / England recalls her heritage. / With her is that which is not bartered, / Which force can neither quell nor cage.
For her immortal stars are burning, / With her, the hope that's never done, / The seed that's in the Spring's returning, / The very flower that seeks the sun.
We fight the fraud that feeds desire on / Lies, in a lust to enslave or kill, / The barren creed of blood and iron, / Vampire of Europe's wasted will.
Endure, O Earth! and thou, awaken, / Purged by this dreadful winnowing-fan, / O wronged, untameable, unshaken / Soul of divinely suffering man!
LAURENCE BINYON