" Why
should this phrase drive me to fury? It does. Well, to recommence:
_Mother, O grey sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry!_
_Thine the glory for ever in the nation born of thy womb!_
_Thine is the Sword and the Shield and the shout that Salamis heard,_
_Surging in AEschylean splendour, earth-shaking acclaim!_
_Ocean-mother of England, thine is the throne of her fame!_
Fancy standing on the shore to-day and addressing the real sea in these
words and accents! Fancy the poet doing it! The mood and the mentality are
prehistoric. I would not mind Mr. Noyes putting himself lyrically into
the woaded skin of our ancestors. But I do think he might have got a
little nearer the mark in indicating the "throne of her fame." Because I
expect Mr. Noyes knows as well as anybody that the real throne of
England's fame is not in the sea at all. England's true fame springs from
the few acts of national justice which she has accomplished, and from the
generous impulses which as a nation she has had--as, for example, in her
relations with Italy; as, for example, in the Factory Acts which prevented
children from working eighteen hours a day six or seven days a week. The
patriotic versifiers of this country will, if they persist, end by making
the sea impossible for a plain man to sail on.
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