XXXII.

Accordingly 'twas settled on the spot
That Allah favoured that peculiar breed
Beside, as all were satisfied, 'twould not
Be quite respectable to have the need
Of public spiritual food forgot;

And so the tribe with proper forms decreed
That he, and, failing him, his next of kin,
For ever for the people's good should spin.

LATER POEMS.

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?
Modesty more debonair?

Younger heart with wit full-grown?
Oh, for an hour of my prime,
The pulse of my hotter years,
That I might praise her in rhyme
Would tingle your eyelids to tears,

Our sweetness, our strength, and our star,
Our hope, our joy, and our trust,
Who lifted us out of the dust
And made us whatever we are!

IV.

Whiter than moonshine upon snow
Her raiment is: but round the hem
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,

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;
She loves yon pine-bemurmured ridge
Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps,
Dear to both Englands; near him he
Who wore the ring of Canacë;

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
Against the might of England fought,

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,