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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  England to America

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

England to America

By William Watson (1858–1935)

From ‘The Purple East’

O TOWERING Daughter, Titan of the West,

Behind a thousand leagues of foam secure;

Thou toward whom our inmost heart is pure

Of ill intent: although thou threatenest

With most unfilial hand thy mother’s breast,

Not for one breathing-space may Earth endure

The thought of War’s intolerable cure

For such vague pains as vex to-day thy rest!

But if thou hast more strength than thou canst spend

In tasks of Peace, and find’st her yoke too tame,

Help us to smite the cruel, to befriend

The succorless, and put the false to shame.

So shall the ages laud thee, and thy name

Be lovely among nations to the end.