Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ENGLAND TO GERMANY IN 1914, by THOMAS HARDY


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ENGLAND TO GERMANY IN 1914, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: O england, may god punish thee!'
Last Line: And present sight, your ancient name.
Subject(s): Germany; World War I; Germans; First World War


'O ENGLAND, may God punish thee!'
- Is it that Teuton genius flowers
Only to breathe malignity
Upon its friend of earlier hours?
- We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours,
We have loved your burgs, your pines' green moan,
Fair Rhine-stream, and its storied towers;
Your shining souls of deathless dowers
Have won us as they were our own:

We have nursed no dreams to shed your blood,
We have matched your might not rancorously
Save a flushed few whose blatant mood
You heard and marked as well as we
To tongue not in their country's key;
But yet you cry with face aflame,
'O England, may God punish thee!'
And foul in onward history,
And present sight, your ancient name.





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