d at his hands and fostered round his knees?
Fear takes the spirit in thraldom at his nod,
And pity makes it as the spirit of God,
As his own soul that from her throne above
Sheds on all souls of men her showers of love,
On all earth's evil and pain
Pours mercy forth as rain 170
And comfort as the dewfall on dry land;
And feeds with pity from a faultless hand
All by their own fault stricken, all cast out
By all men's scorn or doubt,
Or with their own hands wounded, or by fate
Brought into bondage of men's fear or hate.

In violence of strange visions north and south
Confronted, east and west, [_Ant._ 5.
With frozen or fiery breast,
Eyes fixed or fevered, pale or bloodred mouth, 180
Kept watch about his dawn-enkindled dreams;
But ere high noon a light of nearer beams
Made his young heaven of manhood more benign,
And love made soft his lips with spiritual wine,
And left them fired, and fed
With sacramental bread,
And sweet with honey of tenderer words than tears
To feed men's hopes and fortify men's fears,
And strong to silence with benignant breath
The lips that doom to death, 190
And swift with speech like fire in fiery lands
To melt the steel's edge in the headsman's hands.

Higher than they rose of old, [_Ep._ 5.
New builded now, behold,
The live great likeness of Our Lady's towers;
And round them like a dove
Wounded, and sick with love,
One fair ghost moving, crowned with fateful flowers,
Watched yet with eyes of bloodred lust 199
And eyes of love's heart broken and unbroken trust.

But sadder always under shadowier skies, [_Str._ 6.
More pale and sad and clear
Waxed always, drawn more near,
The face of Duty lit with Love's own eyes;
Till the awful hands that culled in rosier hours
From fairy-footed fields of wild old flowers
And sorcerous woods of Rhineland, green and hoary,
Young children's chaplets of enchanted story,
The great kind hands that showed
Exile its homeward road, 210
And, as man's helper made his foeman God,
Of pity and mercy wrought themselves a rod,
And opened for Napoleon's wandering kin
France, and bade enter in,
And threw for all