Might not their swift stroke reach a mail-clad foe?
—Strong hands in harvest, daring feet in chase,
True hearts in fight, were gather’d on that place
Of secret council. Not for fame or spoil
So met those men in Heaven’s majestic face:
To guard free hearths they rose, the sons of toil,
The hunter of the rocks, the tiller of the soil.
VIII.
O’er their low pastoral valleys might the tide
Of years have flow’d, and still, from sire to son,