the world, plume-wafted on air,
Britons on each side sea,--Caerlleon and Cumbria,--share,
Joy of a downtrod race, dear hope of freedom to-be,
Dream of poetic hearts, whom the vision only can see! . . .
For thine were the fairy knights, fair ideals of beauty and song;
But ours, in the ways of men, walk'd sober, and stumbling, and strong;--
Stumbling as who in peril and twilight their pathway trace out,
Hard to trace, and untried, and the foe above and about;
For the Charter of Freedom, the voice of the land in her Council secure
All doing, all daring,--and, e'en when defeated, of victory sure!
Langton, our Galahad, first, stamp'd Leader by Rome unaware,
Pembroke and Mowbray, Fitzwarine, Fitzalan, Fitzwalter, De Clare:--
--O fair temple of Freedom and Law!--the foundations ye laid:--
But again came the storm, and the might of darkness and wrong was
array'd,
A warfare of years; and the battle raged, and new heroes arose
From a soil that is fertile in manhood's men, and scatter'd the foes,
And set in their place the bright pillars of Order, Liberty's shrine,
O'er the land far-seen, as o'er Athens the home of Athena divine.
--So the land had rest:--and the cloud of that heart-sore struggle and
pain
Sped from her ancient hills, and peace shone o'er her again,
Sunlike chasing the plagues wherewith the land was defiled:
And the leprosy fled, and her flesh came again, as the flesh of a child.
For lo! the crown'd Statesman of Law, Justinian himself of his realm,
Edward, since Alfred our wisest of all who have watch'd by the helm!
He who yet preaches in silence his life-word, the light of his way,
From his marble unadorn'd chest, in the heart of the West Minster gray,
_Keep thy Faith_ . . . In the great town-twilight, this city of gloom,
--O how unlike that blithe London he look'd on!--I look on his tomb,
In the circle of kings, round the shrine, where the air is heavy with
fame,
Dust of our moulder'd chieftains, and splendour shrunk to a name.
Silent synod august, ye that tried the delight and the pain,
Trials and snares of a throne, was the legend written in vain?
Speak, for ye know, crown'd shadows! who down each narrow and strait
As ye might, once guided,--a perilous passage,--the keel of the State,
Fourth Henry, fourth Edward, Elizabeth, Charles,--now ye rest from your
toil,
Was it best, when by truth and compass ye steer'd, or by statecraft and
guile?
Or is it so hard, that steering of States, that as men who throw in
W