Happy 60th, Elizabeth. A.E. Houseman (in A Shropshire Lad, 1896) celebrates an earlier monarchic anniversary.
Pinched from Bartleby.
| I. From Clee to heaven the beacon burns |
| 1887 |
| FROM Clee to heaven the beacon burns, | |||||
| The shires have seen it plain, | |||||
| From north and south the sign returns | |||||
| And beacons burn again. | |||||
| Look left, look right, the hills are bright, | 5 | ||||
| The dales are light between, | |||||
| Because ’tis fifty years to-night | |||||
| That God has saved the Queen. | |||||
| Now, when the flame they watch not towers | |||||
| About the soil they trod, | 10 | ||||
| Lads, we ’ll remember friends of ours | |||||
| Who shared the work with God. | |||||
| To skies that knit their heartstrings right, | |||||
| To fields that bred them brave, | |||||
| The saviours come not home to-night | 15 | ||||
| Themselves they could not save. | |||||
| It dawns in Asia, tombstones show | |||||
| And Shropshire names are read; | |||||
| And the Nile spills his overflow | |||||
| Beside the Severn’s dead. | 20 | ||||
| We pledge in peace by farm and town | |||||
| The Queen they served in war, | |||||
| And fire the beacons up and down | |||||
| The land they perished for. | |||||
| ‘God save the Queen’ we living sing, | 25 | ||||
| From height to height ’tis heard; | |||||
| And with the rest your voices ring, | |||||
| Lads of the Fifty-third. | |||||
| Oh, God will save her, fear you not: | |||||
| Be you the men you ’ve been, | 30 | ||||
| Get you the sons your fathers got, | |||||
| And God will save the Queen. |
Pinched from Bartleby.
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