their old repose,
Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs
and flows.

Broad and bold through the stays of old staked fast with trunks of
the wildwood tree,
Up from shoreward, impelled far forward, by marsh and meadow, by
lawn and lea,
Inland still at her own wild will swells, rolls, and revels the
surging sea.

Strong as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with shadows
of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of
prayers and tears,--
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and
waning years.

Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that
glooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and
snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a
straight stem grows.

Aisle and nave that the whelming wave of time has whelmed not or
touched or neared,
Arch and vault without stain or fault, by hands of craftsmen we
know not reared,
Time beheld them, and time was quelled; and change passed by them
as one that feared.

Time that flies as a dream, and dies as dreams that die with the
sleep they feed,
Here alone in a garb of stone incarnate stands as a god indeed,
Stern and fair, and of strength to bear all burdens mortal to man's
frail seed.

Men and years are as leaves or tears that storm or sorrow is fain
to shed:
These go by as the winds that sigh, and none takes note of them
quick or dead:
Time, whose breath is their birth and death, folds here his
pinions, and bows his head.

Still the sun that beheld begun the work wrought here of unwearied
hands
Sees, as then, though the Red King's men held ruthless rule over
lawless lands,
Stand their massive design, impassive, pure and proud as a virgin
stands.

Statelier still as the years fulfil their count, subserving her
sacred state,
Grows the hoary grey church whose story silence utters and age
makes great:
Statelier seems it than shines in dreams the face unveiled of
unvanquished fate.

Fate, more high than the star-s