ird
That talks, but understands not his own word;
Stands, and so stood a thousand years ago,
A single tree.
Thunder has done its worst among its twigs,
Where the great crest yet blackens, never pruned,
But in its heart, alway
Ready to push new verdurous boughs, whene'er
The rotting saplings near it fall and leave it air,
Is all antiquity and no decay.
Rich, though rejected by the forest-pigs,
Its fruit, beneath whose rough, concealing rind
They that will break it find
Heart-succouring savour of each several meat,
And kernell'd drink of brain-renewing power,
With bitter condiment and sour,
And sweet economy of sweet,
And odours that remind
Of haunts of childhood and a different day.
Beside this tree,
Praising no Gods nor blaming, sans a wish,
Sits, Tartar-like, the Time's civility,
And eats its dead-dog off a golden dish.

IV. THE STANDARDS.

That last,
Blown from our Sion of the Seven Hills,
Was no uncertain blast!
Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,
And minatory murmurs, answering, mar
The Night, both near and far,
Perplexing many a drowsy citadel
Beneath whose ill-watch'd walls the Powers of Hell,
With armed jar
And angry threat, surcease
Their long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!
Lo, yonder, where our little English band,
With peace in heart and wrath in hand,
Have dimly ta'en their stand,
Sweetly the light
Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,
Whence, o'er the dawning Land,
Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate
'Gainst the black flag of Hate. {62}
Envy not, little band,
Your brothers under the Hohenzollern hoof
Put to the splendid proof.
Your hour is near!
The spectre-haunted time of idle Night,
Your only fear,
Thank God, is done,
And Day and War, Man's work-time and delight,
Begun.
Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer,
Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge,
The wish'd Sun shall emerge;
Lest once again the Flower of Sharon bloom
After a way the Stalk call heresy.
Strange splendour and strange gloom
Alike confuse the path
Of customary faith;
And when the dim-seen mountains turn to flame
And every roadside atom is a spark,
The dazzled sense, that used was to the dark,
May well doubt, 'Is't the safe way and the same
By which we came
From Egypt, and to Canaan mean to go?'
But know,
The clearness then so marvellously increas'd,
The light'ning shining Westward from the East,
Is the great promised sign
Of His victorious and divine
App