Chapter X

To us, O Queen of sinless grace,
Now at our prayer unveil thy face;
Awake again thy beauty free;
Return and make our Graces three.
And with our thronging strength to the ends of the earth
Thy myriad-voicèd loveliness go forth,
To lead o’er all the world’s wide ways
God’s everlasting praise,
And every heart inspire
With the joy of man in the beauty of Love’s desire.

THE FAIR BRASS.

An effigy of brass,
Trodden by careless feet
Of worshippers that pass,
Beautiful and complete,

Lieth in the sombre aisle
Of this old church unwreckt,
And still from modern style
Shielded by kind neglect.

It shows a warrior armed:
Across his iron breast
His hands by death are charmed
To leave his sword at rest,

Wherewith he led his men
O’er sea, and smote to hell
The astonisht Saracen,
Nor doubted he did well.

Would we could teach our sons
His trust in face of doom,
Or give our bravest ones
A comparable tomb:

Such as to look on shrives
The heart of half its care,
So in each line survives
The spirit that made it fair;

So fair the characters
With which the dusky scroll
That tells his title stirs
A requiem for his soul.

Yet dearer far to me,
And brave as he, are they
Who fight by land and sea
For England at this day;

Whose vile memorials,
In mournful marbles gilt,
Deface the beauteous walls
By growing glory built.

Heirs of our antique shrines,
Sires of our future fame,
Whose starry honor shines
In many a noble name

Across the deathful days,
Linked in the brotherhood
That loves our country’s praise
And lives for heavenly good.

NOVEMBER.

I.

The lonely season in lonely lands, when fled
Are half the birds, and mists lie low, and the sun
Is rarely seen, nor strayeth far from his bed;
The short days pass unwelcomed one by one.

Out by the ricks the mantled engine stands
Crestfall’n, deserted,--for now all hands
Are told to the plough,--and ere it is dawn appear
The teams following and crossing far and near,
As hour by hour they broaden the brown bands
Of the striped fields; and behind them firk and prance
The heavy rooks, and daws gray-pated dance:
Or awhile, surmounting a crest, against the sky
Pictured a whole team stands, or now near by
Above the lane they shout, lifting the share,
By the trim hedgerow bloomed with purple air;
Where, under the thorns, dead leaves in huddle lie
Packed by the gales of Autumn, and in and out
The small wrens glide
With a happy note of cheer,
And yellow amorets flutter above and about,
Gay, familiar in fear.