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152 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS

The Land That Freedom Chose

rou ask me, why, though ill at ease.

Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,
The land where, girt with friends or foes,
A man may speak the thing he will.
A land of settled government,
A land of just and old renown,
Where Freedom slowly broadens down
From precedent to precedent.

Tennyson on his Native Land

Bound by Gold Chains

things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ?
For so the whole round Earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. Tennyson

Till Crowds be Sane and Crowns be Just

PEOPLE'S voice ! we are a people yet,
Though all men else their nobler dreams forget,
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers
Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set
His Briton in blown seas and storming showers,
We have a voice with which to pay the debt
Of boundless love and reverence and regret
To those great men who fought, and kept it ours.
And keep it ours, O God, from brute control;
O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole,
And save the one true seed of freedom sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne,
That sober freedom out of which there springs
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings ;
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,
And drill the raw world for the march of mind
Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just.

Tennyson's Ode on the Death of Wellington

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