The England of Queen Elizabeth was the England of Shakespeare: This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,This other Eden, demi-paradise;This fortress built by Nature for herselfAgainst infection and the hand of war;This happy breed of men, this little world,This precious stone set in the silver sea,Which serves it in the office of a wall,Or as a moat defensive to a house,Against the envy of less happier lands;This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. In Tennyson’s Princess we find an echo of these words, where the poet, in contrasting England and France, monarchy and republic - much to the disadvantage of the latter - says: God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled. But at a later date, in an “Epilogue to the Queen,” at the close of the Idylls of the King, Tennyson has said farewell to his narrow insular views, and speaks of Our ocean-empire with her boundless homesFor ever-broadening England, and her throneIn our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle,That knows not her own greatness: if she knowsAnd dreads it we are fall’n.
