Well aware we shall have so much less wheat

In the eventual harvest: you meantime

Waste not a spike,—the richlier will you reap!

What then? There will be always garnered meal

Sufficient for our comfortable loaf,

While you enjoy the undiminished sack!"

Is it not this ignoble confidence,

Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,

Makes the old heroism impossible?

Unless ... what whispers me of times to come?