No calms of light, no purple lands,
No sanctuaries sublime:
Like storms of snow, like quaking sands,
Thine atoms drift through time.
1889.
III.
Mightiest-minded of the Roman race,
Lucretius!
In thy predestined, purgatory place,
Where thou and thine Iphigenia wait:
What think'st thou of the Vision and the Fate,
Wherewith the Christ makes all thine outcries vain?
Art learning Christ through sweet and bitter pain,
Lucretius?
Heaviest-hearted of the sons of men,
Lucretius!
Well couldst thou justify severe thoughts then,
Considering thy lamentable Rome:
But thou wilt come to an imperial home,
With walls of jasper, past the walls of fire:
To God's proud City, and thine heart's desire,
Lucretius!
1887.
ENTHUSIASTS.
To the Rev. Percy Dearmer.
Let your swords flash, and wound the golden air of God:
Bright steel, to meet and cleave the splendour of His sun!
Now is a war of wars in majesty begun:
Red shall the cornfields ripen, where our horses trod,
Where scythe nor sickle swept, but smote war's iron rod:
Where the stars rose and set, and saw the blood still run.
So shall men tell of us, and dread our deeds, though done:
New annals yet shall praise time's fiercest period.
Let your swords flash, and wound the glowing air: now play
A glorious dance of death, with clash and gleam of sword.
Did Syrian sun and moon stand still on Israel's day?
Those orbs halt over Ajalon at Joshua's word?
Of us, who ride for God, shall Christian children say:
To battle, see! flash by armed angels of the Lord.