MASEFIELD, a poem

On re-reading Gallipoli and the Sonnets

I thought on England in her tragic hour
     Of sacrifice supreme for human right;
     Beheld her bleeding, broken in the fight
With a massed tyranny's stupendous power;
And musing on far graves where lie her flower
     Of manhood, memory so dimmed my sight
     That I forgot the dawn that crowned her night—
The victory that was her valor's dower.

Then, even as I grieved, I saw once more
     How genius can atone and re-create:
How, by its own high gift, it can restore
     The Land that gives it birth to sovereign State,
Rekindling glories that it knew before,
     And deepening its life to life as great!

"Masefield" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The North American Review (May 1922).