Behold! Man setteth thine image in the height of Heaven
And hallowing his untemper’d love
Crowneth and throneth thee ador’d
(Tranquilly joyous to hold
The man-child in thine arms)
God-like apart from conflict to save thee
To guard thy weak caressive beauty
With incontaminate jewels of soul
Courage, patience, and self-devotion:
All this glory he gave thee.
Secret and slow is Nature
Imperceptibly moving
With surely determinate aim:
To woman it fell to be early in prime
Ready to labour, mould, and cherish
The delicate head of all Production
The wistful late-maturing boy
Who made Knowing of Being.
Therefore art thou ador’d
Mother of God in man
Naturing nurse of power:
They who adore not thee shall perish
But thou shalt keep thy path of joy
Envied of Angels because the All-father
Call’d thee to mother his nascent Word
And complete the creation.
THE CURFEW TOWER.
Thro’ innocent eyes at the world awond’ring
Nothing spake to me more superbly
Than the round bastion of Windsor’s wall
That warding the Castle’s southern angle
An old inheritor of Norman prowess
Was call’d by the folk the Curfew Tow’r.
Above the masonry’s rugged courses
A turreted clock of Caroline fashion
Told time to the town in black and gold.
It charmed the hearts of Henry’s scholars
As kingly a mentor of English story
As Homer’s poem is of Ilion:
Nor e’er in the landscape look’d it fairer
Than when we saw its white bulk halo’d
In a lattice of slender scaffoldings.