V

I

I cannot think he wished so soon to die With all his senses full of eager heat, And rosy years that stood expectant by To buckle the winged sandals on their feet,

He that was friends with Earth, and all her sweet

Took with both hands unsparingly:
Truly this life is precious to the root,
And good the feel of grass beneath the
foot;

To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, 420
Tenants in common with the bees,
And watch the white clouds drift through
gulfs of trees,

Is better than long waiting in the tomb;
Only once more to feel the coming spring
As the birds feel it, when it bids them
sing,

Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms

Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were a boon

Worth any promise of soothsayer realms

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Nature rebels at: and it is not true Of those most precious parts of him we

knew:

Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 'T were sweet to leave this shifting life

of tents

Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity;
Nay, to be mingled with the elements,
The fellow-servant of creative powers,
Partaker in the solemn year's events,
To share the work of busy - fingered
hours,

To be night's silent almoner of dew, 480
To rise again in plants and breathe and

grow,

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Crimson stained; and, as to and fro
Her sandals flash, we see on them,
And on her instep veined with blue,
Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet,
High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet,
Fit for no grosser stain than dew:
Oh, call them rather chrisms than stains,
Sacred and from heroic veins !
For, in the glory-guarded pass,
Her haughty and far-shining head
She bowed to shrive Leonidas
With his imperishable dead;
Her, too, Morgarten saw,

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Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy paw;
She followed Cromwell's quenchless star
Where the grim Puritan tread
Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar:
Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes
Yet fresh, not looked on with untearful
eyes.

Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps,
Dear to both Englands; near him he
Who wore the ring of Canace;
But most her heart to rapture leaps
Where stood that era-parting bridge,
O'er which, with footfall still as dew,
The Old Time passed into the New;
Where, as your stealthy river creeps,
He whispers to his listening weeds
Tales of sublimest homespun deeds.
Here English law and English thought
'Gainst the self-will of England fought;
And here were men (coequal with their
fate),

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Who did great things, unconscious they were great.

They dreamed not what a die was cast With that first answering shot; what then? There was their duty; they were men Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey, Though leading to the lion's den.

They felt the habit-hallowed world give

From all heaven's caverns rushing unconfined,

'I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge: I abide

With men whom dust of faction cannot blind

To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind; With men by culture trained and fortified, Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, Fearless to counsel and obey.

Conscience my sceptre is, and law my sword,

Not to be drawn in passion or in play, 190 But terrible to punish and deter; Implacable as God's word,

Like it, a shepherd's crook to them that blindly err.

Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my saints,

Offshoots of that one stock whose patient