White Founts Falling in the Courts of the Sun

For the Inmost Sea of All the Earth is Shaken With His Ships

From Evening Isles Fantastical Rings Faint the Spanish Gun

The Last Knight of Europe Takes Weapons From the Wall

Holding His Head Up for a Flag of All the Free

And He Strides Among the Treetops and is Taller than the Trees

Whose Strong Obedience Broke the Sky

Splashed With a Splendid Sickness, the Sickness of the Pearl

And He Saith, Break Up the Mountains Where the Hermit-Folk Can Hide

For That Which Was Our Trouble Comes Again Out of the West

It is He That Saith Not Kismet, it is He That Knows Not Fate

Where the Grey Seas Glitter and the Sharp Tides Shift

He Shakes His Lance of Iron and He Claps His Wings of Stone

And Dead is All the Innocence of Anger and Surprise

And Death is in the Phial, and the End of Noble Work

The Secret Window Whence the World Looks Small and Very Dear

The Stair-Ways of the Tallest Gods When Tyranny was Young

Breaking of the Hatches Up and Bursting of the Holds

And He Sees Across a Weary Land a Straggling Road in Spain

Up Which a Lean and Foolish Knight Forever Rides in Vain

Epilogue: But Don John of Austria Rides Home from the Crusade