Who comes to England not to learn
The love for her his fathers bore,
Breathing her air, can still return
No kindlier than he was before.
In vain, for him, from shore to shore
Those fathers strewed an alien strand
With the loved names that evermore
Are native to our ear and land.
Who sees the English elm-trees fling...
The Great Republic goes to war,
But spring still comes as spring has done,
And all the summer months will run
Their summer sequence as before;
And every bird will build its nest,
The sun sink daily in the west,
And rising eastward bring new day
In the old way.
But ah, those dawns will have a light,
Those...
A Dead soul lay in the light of day,
Desperate, wan, it had passed;
Oft foiled, it had toiled on its upward way,
Till it perished, spent, aghast,
After a thousand defeats the prey
Of its conquering sin at last.
Said a stranger:—“Lo, how in shame and woe
Is Satan’s seal ever set!”
Laughed a foe:—“Doth the carrion lie so...
It is the hour when Arno turns
Her gold to chrysoprase;
When each low-hanging star outburns
Its faint, mysterious rays,
As from the prison of faery urns
Which faery hands upraise.
It is the hour when life’s constraint
A moment’s ease is given;
When Earth is like a holy saint,
Stilled, sanctified, and shriven,...
