The slackness of your love—the nurse who bore
Your creeping childhood on her fostering soil,
And through your slow growth up to firmer years,
Toiled that the strong arms of her faithful sons,
Might shield her need. Up to this hour the god
Inclines to us; though close hedged in by the foe,
The vantage hath been ours. But now the seer,
The shepherd of prophetic birds’ revolving
In his ear and inward sense deep-pondered truths,[n2]
By no false art, though without help from fire,