Enlisted, Or The Recruits Poem by Charles John Beech Masefield

Humbly, O England, we offer what is of little worth,
Just our bodies and souls and everything else we have;
But thou with thy holy cause wilt hallow our common earth,
Giving us strength in the battle and peace, if need, in the grave.

Humble, O England, we are, for of hero-fathers we come,
Men that contested with tyrants the mightier destinies;
Philip of Spain we remember, and the ships that never went home,
And him that was caught at last, and isled in the warder seas.

Humbly, O England, we bring thee life in its folly- stained youth,
That which, it may be, has striven, but ever has slackened and tired;
The faltering, often deceived, to combat now for the Truth,
Dim-visioned, to smite for the morrow unknown but desired.