d like great men upon the earth
Flickering their false shadows. Fear, like a hound,
Hunts them, and there's a death in every sound;
And had they souls sorrow would prick their souls
At every heavy sigh the wind waved forth.
... Into their holes they've crept, and they will die.
Of them no more and never any more.
Their leper-gilt is gone, and they will lie
Poisoning a little earth and nothing more.
VII
--That justice has been saved and wrong been slain,
That the slow fever-darkness ends in day,
Nor madness shakes the pillared world again
With the same blind proud fury; that in vain
Whispers the Tempter now, "So pass away
Strength, honesty and hope, and nothing left but pain!"
That the many-voiced confusion of the night
Clears in the winging of a spirit bright
With new-recovered joy;--for this, O Light,
Light Giver, Night Dispeller, praise should be.
But praise is dumb from burning hearts to Thee.
VIII
But as a forest bending in the wind
Murmurs in all its boughs after the wind,
Sounds uninterpreted and untaught airs;
So now when Thy wind over England stirs,
The proud and untranslating sounds of praise
Mingle tumultuous over our human ways;
And magnifying echoes of Thy wind
Rouse in the profoundest forests of the mind.
IX
And in the secret thicket where Thy light
Is dimmed with starry shining of the night,
Hearing these mingled airs from every wood
Thou'lt smile serenely down, murmuring, "'Tis good."
While Angels in the thicket borders curled
Amid the farthest gold beams of Thy hair,
Seeing on one drooped beam this distant world
Floating illumined, cry, "Bright Lord, how fair!"
OUT OF THE EAST
When man first walked upright and soberly
Reflecting as he paced to and fro,
And no more swinging from wide tree to tree,
Or sheltered by vast boles from sheltered foe,
Or crouched within some deep cave by the sea
Stared at the noisy waste of water's woe
Where the earth ended, and far lightning died
Splintered upon the rigid tideless tide;
When man above Time's cloud lifted his head
And speech knew, and the company of speech,
And from his alien presence wild beasts fled
And birds flew wary from his arrow's reach,
And cattle trampling the long meadow weed
Did sentry in the wind's path set; when each
Horn, hoof, claw, sting and sinew against man
Was turned, and the old enmity began;
When, following, beneath the hand of kings
Moved men their parting ways,
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