The Song of the Sword

easts Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware In any of her innumerable nests Of that first sudden plash of dawn, Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day, In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn Forward and up, in wider and wider way Shall float the sands and brim the shores On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars And spins into the outlook of the Sun (The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge) With light, with living light, from marge to marge, Until the course He set and staked be run. Through street and square, through square and street, Each with his home-grown quality of dark And violated silence, loud and fleet, Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, 0 hark, Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain Ring back a rough refrain Upon the marked and cheerful tramp Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, And 0 the languid midsummer wafts adust, The tired midsummer blooms! 0 the mysterious distances, the glooms Romantic, the august And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees Turns to a tryst of vague and strange And monstrous Majesties, Let loose from some dim underworld to range These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand Beggared and common, plain to all the land For stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hour Whose shining, silent sor...