spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail,
Till mitre and cowl bow down
And crumble as a crown,
Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope
Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope,
And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all
Lower than his fortune fall; 270
The wolfish waif of casual empire, born
To turn all hate and horror cold with scorn.

Yea, even at night's full noon [_Ep._ 7.
Light's birth-song brake in tune,
Spake, witnessing that with us one must be,
God; naming so by name
That priests have brought to shame
The strength whose scourge sounds on the smitten sea;
The mystery manifold of might
Which bids the wind give back to night the things of night. 280

Even God, the unknown of all time; force or thought, [_Str._ 8.
Nature or fate or will,
Clothed round with good and ill,
Veiled and revealed of all things and of nought,
Hooded and helmed with mystery, girt and shod
With light and darkness, unapparent God.
Him the high prophet o'er his wild work bent
Found indivisible ever and immanent
At hidden heart of truth,
In forms of age and youth 290
Transformed and transient ever; masked and crowned,
From all bonds loosened and with all bonds bound,
Diverse and one with all things; love and hate,
Earth, and the starry state
Of heaven immeasurable, and years that flee
As clouds and winds and rays across the sea.

But higher than stars and deeper than the waves
Of day and night and morrow [_Ant._ 8.
That roll for all time, sorrow
Keeps ageless watch over perpetual graves. 300
From dawn to morning of the soul in flower,
Through toils and dreams and visions, to that hour
When all the deeps were opened, and one doom
Took two sweet lives to embrace them and entomb,
The strong song plies its wing
That makes the darkness ring
And the deep light reverberate sound as deep;
Song soft as flowers or grass more soft than sleep,
Song bright as heaven above the mounting bird,
Song like a God's tears heard 310
Falling, fulfilled of life and death and light,
And all the stars and all the shadow of night.

Till, when its flight hath past [_Ep._ 8.
Time's lofties