Classic Poem

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!