V.
No fluctuant favours—servile spouse
Of princes’ transient smile—
Did e’er bedeck their sacred brows,
Their saintly souls defile:
No life-warm lips their own had kissed
(Earth’s hope-inspiring dove)—
Their life was one long Eucharist
Eternalised in love.
VI.
The workers went; the works remain.
Time here small kingship owns.
Thro’ ’whelming winds, thro’ sun and rain,
Have lived these lichened stones,
And that brief tower upreared by those
Whose dread was from the deep,—
In strife their strength, in peace repose,
Their guardian now in sleep.
VII.
Thine eyes, old tower, have scanned the scroll
And palimpsest of Earth,
And fain would we thy thoughts unroll
Thro’ years of bliss or dearth,
For thou from thy calm height dost look
With sage, dispassionate eye,
To where the star of day-dawn shook
Within a youthful sky.
VIII.
We deem thee old; but age is not
A toll of hours and days,—
Mean measure of our little lot
And arbitrary ways.
We run our little round of change
Thro’ years of less or more,
But Time to thee holds nought of strange,
Unheard, unseen before.
IX.
Down paths of night no starrier balls
No new Milanion throws;
Thro’ no transfigured day’s high halls
Th’ itinerant breeze still blows;
Belligerent ever, baffled still,
Th’ importunate surges swing;
Still dear as dawn th’ ecstatic thrill
And prophet power of Spring.