And men, as sheep within their folds,
Grope round their world with great sad eyes;
And hate the hand that still withholds
The secret of the skies;
Or, deeming God an idle tale
Withdrawn from lore of ancient shelves,
Themselves would reckon by the scale
And measure of themselves!
How mean the stature of the song
Of our inglorious—glorious time,
Attenuating, as along
It moves from that great prime
When Milton, in the midnight hours,
Lay waiting for the mystic breath
Of God to touch his soul to flowers
Of song that smile at Death.
O singers of the years to come!
Be yours the large and liberal scope:
Sing sweetly—or for aye be dumb—
Of God, and Love, and Hope,
Encircled by no little line
Of gain or loss, of time or sense,
Nor, bent at Mammon’s soulless shrine,
Your birth-right part for pence;
But bend an arm across the past,
And finger all the vibrant years,
Till sunlight, on our shadows cast,
Makes rainbows of our tears.
There it stands, as it has stood—
Theme for bards, and theme for seers—
Mute to sun and tempests rude,
To the swift express of years;
Stretched across from bank to bank
Where the rabbits flash and go,
Where the fir-trees, rank by rank,
Gaze upon the track below