Brittania's Throne



MIRROR of the trackless sky,   
Priestess of its changing mood,   
Ere thy shores were piled on high   
Thou didst feel God’s Spirit brood;   
Thou didst hear His word alone;—           
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.   
  
From thy deeps the creeping things   
Spread through cove and brook and fen,   
Changing scales for soaring wings   
And the mould of mortal men;           
From thy womb the world hath grown!   
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.   
  
Then among the happier ones   
Filing in millennial train,   
Thou didst make us favoured sons,           
Teaching us to rule and reign:   
Thou didst call us for thine own—   
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.   
  
Mighty Mistress, thou didst school   
England’s heart in all thy ways;           
May she learn no nicer rule   
In the ease of after days;   
For the greatness we have known   
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.   
  
For the passion of our plea,           
For the memory of our brave,   
For the fights we fought for thee,   
For the bones that thou dost lave,   
For the love that we have shown!   
Be thou still Britannia’s throne.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

53 sec read
99

Quick analysis:

Scheme ababcC dedecC fgfgcC hihicC jkjkcC
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,109
Words 178
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 6

Arthur Maquarie

Arthur Maquarie was born in Dubbo, NSW, as Arthur Frank Macquarie Mullens, later changed his name by deed poll. After graduating from the University of Sydney in 1895 he worked in England as a freelance writer, in Italy as a teacher of English, and also lived in France and Spain; he was active in the Royal Society of Literature and organised the British committee which promoted intellectual harmony among the Allies in the First World War. He wrote several plays on medieval subjects and several volumes of lyrical verse, but is most significant for the assistance he provided to Henry Lawson in London in 1900-1; as well as writing articles about Lawson which helped introduce him to literary London, Maquarie arranged meetings with editors, publishers and literary agents, and lived with Lawson while part of the Joe Wilson sequence was being written. Lawson's poignant portrait of Maquarie's struggle as a hack writer in London forms part of recently discovered material and is included in Brian Kiernan's The Essential Henry Lawson (1982). more…

All Arthur Maquarie poems | Arthur Maquarie Books

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