Fierce with the tumults of eight hundred years,
Loud with their cries of echoing strife and scorn;
Soft with their woes; child of their hopes and fears,
Poet we look for, come; awake! Be born!
Our little life fills out its little round,
Our little pipes play on their puny strains.
We grope, we fumble on the dusky ground,
Still searching, hoping, for some scattered grains.
Stammering weak ditties on an alien strand,
Babbling poor plaintive notes, which sink forlorn,