XXXII. Accordingly 'twas settled on the spot And so the tribe with proper forms decreed Looks that forti.y despair, Tones more brave than trumpet's breath: Tell me, maidens, have ye known Household charm more sweetly rare? Grace of woman ampler blown? Younger heart with wit full-grown? Our sweetness, our strength, and our star, IV. Whiter than moonshine upon snow Her haughty and far-shining head She bowed to shrive Leonidas With his imperishable dead; Her, too, Morgarten saw, 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, nor looked on with untearful eyes. V. Our fathers found her in the woods Where Nature meditates and broods The seeds of unexampled things Which Time to consummation brings Through life and death and man's unstable moods; They met her here, not recognised, A sylvan huntress clothed in furs, To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed, Nor dreamed what destinies were hers: She taught them beelike to create Their simpler forms of Church and State; She taught them to endue The Past with other functions than it knew, And turn in channels strange the uncertain stream of Fate; Better than all, she fenced them in their need With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word and deed. VI. Why cometh she hither to-day To this low village of the plain Far from the Present's loud highway, From Trade's cool heart and seething brain? Why cometh she? she was not far away; Since the soul touched it, not in vain, With pathos of immortal gain, 'Tis here her fondest memories stay; But most her heart to rapture leaps And here were men (co-equal with their fate) 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 Long schooled the inward gospel to obey Though leading to the lions' den; They felt the habit-hallowed world give way Beneath their lives, and on went they, Unhappy who was last : When Buttrick gave the word, That awful idol of the hallowed Past, Strong in their love and in their lineage strong, Fell crashing; if they heard it not, Yet the earth heard, Nor ever hath forgot, As on from startled throne to throne, Where Superstition sate or conscious Wrong, |