Though Jeshurun kicks and grows fatter and fatter,
And chinks in his pockets the gold of his gain,
Yet up in the gables the young sparrows chatter,
The corn-fields are rich with the promise of grain,
The hedges are yellow, and (balm to the brain!)
Their pink and white blossoms the cherry trees scatter —
The blossoming orchards of England remain!

Long lines of our soldiers swing by with a clatter,
To die in their thousands by river and plain,
In lands where the gathering loud torrents batter,
They heap the hills high with heroical slain —
But far in the weald how the misty moons wane!
And deep in a silence no anger can shatter
The blossoming orchards of England remain!

The world is a fool and as mad as a hatter —
And poets and lovers were sent her for bane —
Yet theirs are the ears which can catch the first patter,
The prophet of all God's abundance of rain,
The smell of earth earthy and wholesome again;
And from the drenched ground where the spent bullets spatter
The blossoming orchards of England remain!

L'Envoi

Princes and potentates, ye whom men flatter,
Harken a moment to this my refrain —
Ye shall pass as a dream, and it will not much matter —
The blossoming orchards of England remain!