THE INALIENABLE HERITAGE

From this loud noise of passing things, These restless hours with ceaseless hum, To centuries which, like sleeping kings, Rest in the sun, Turn we. Six hundred years twice told Of blood and power, tears and fame, Twelve hundred high-piled years have rolled In pride or shame, Since those strong brothers of the cross A world deep-whelmed in strife and sin— High throned on power, sunk in loss— Set out to win. The bitter, sanguinary lands Which most abhorred the Faith, they trod, And carried in their naked hands The gifts of God. Oh, wide-armed power of certitude! All knowledge, wisdom, guile above! Wrapped in a two-fold amplitude Of faith and love, They came, saw, won. No craft was there, No conquering sword, no armed appeal, Only a child’s belief in prayer, And a child’s zeal. Unarmed, unlearned, yet simply wise, Oh sandalled soldiers, brave and true, A mighty continent still lies In debt to you!

From pastures deep in rain-fed grass, From high, sea-smitten rocks austere, As curlew, hern, and bittern pass, So, year by year, On tireless bleeding feet they trod From Eiré to Imperial Rome, Slept ’neath the stars; the breast of God Their shield and home. No devious track was theirs of fear, The best-worn paths they loved to take, Till Heaven itself seemed chiefly dear For the world’s sake. And if at times their loud-pitched screed Rasps on our subtler nerves to-day, Certes an older, dreamier creed Behind it lay. The wind-shod myrmidons of sleep, The dancers upon heath and fell, The fluters of the woodland deep— They knew these well. For who those flutes would mark as clear, Or note the fluters dancing by As men who prayed, and lay in fear ’Neath a dark sky! A sky thick-set with rustling wing, An earth thrilled through with awful knell Amid whose hollow toilings ring Loud cries of hell. With ancient terrors worse than death; Yet lit with lights beyond our ken; Stern burden for the fleeting breath Of short-lived men! Yet no blind homage of a slave Was theirs—dark souls which cringe to live— To One they loved and served they gave As lovers give.

Here, where a green and dripping land Mounts to the softly dappled skies, And the invasive careless hand Of change defies, Still seem those brown-clad forms to roam, To musing pause, or dreaming stand, Lone lookers for another home Than this green land. Grass-grown their ruined walls still top Yon bare, brown hill, yon bleak, grey shore, Half-fallen, titanic plinths still prop A low, bent door. Or under shudderings of the wave, Which on some dripping threshold fall, Yawns wide a dark, surf-fashioned cave Where sea-mews call, Where far and free the foam-bells fly, And round its roof their white orbs toss, Yet ’mid whose gleamings we descry Half-hewn a cross. Or low-roofed cave above some lake To whose damp sides no sunbeams stray, Yet where entangled ripples wake Dim dreams of day, In sheaves, in lines of dancing light, Thin watery streaks of broken green, Whose interlacings cheat the sight, Dying ere seen.

Oh ancient brother frank and true, Great-couraged; heart and conscience free; No cloistered pedant soul; in you A man, I see. Large-natured, filled with primal joys, Young Earth’s own greater soul, meseems, At home with death as ardent boys With hopes or dreams. Serene in solitude. In crowds Austerely gay. Devoutly wise The large clear light of yonder clouds Shines through your eyes. The tenets of your far-off home From high-famed land to land you spread, Nor to the might of mightiest Rome Bent that shorn head. Across these wind-swept waves of Time Whose murmurings fill our listening ear, Old thoughts, old deeds befitting rhyme— Yours still shines clear.

Yet wherefore was this early light, This glowing hope, this promise sent, If, ere ’twas even marked aright, It sank—it went? We ask. But silence, grey, sedate, Cold answer proffers as is fit To questionings importunate, Devoid of wit. Mere probings of the how and why, Poor words, scarce stronger than a moan, Yet answered, if at all, then by A God alone; Who in the blade perceives the grain, And in dumb flesh the dreaming soul, Gathers the ends of joy and pain. The foreseen whole. And yet we ask, why thus allowed This dawn, these hopes so fondly nursed, These nascent gifts so high endowed, Yet subtly cursed? Cursed too by no mere vacant breath, No priestly ban, or seer’s vain rhyme, Cursed by a doom as old as Death, As deep as Time; Writ in some dull foreboding star, Which, hovering o’er man’s little life, Diffuses poison from afar, Cold hate, dull strife. Oh, lost the goodly growing years! The years that shape a nation most! Wasted in faction, drowned in tears, Lost, lost, all lost! “Yet, stay!” some urge, “such words estrange, Hope’s freer, happier spirit blights, Wisdom would take a larger range, Climb loftier heights; “What if the weeds your fields have marred, What if your barns show vacant floors, Are there not other lands unscarred, Brighter than yours?” “True,” we reply, “on alien shores The weeds by hostile breezes sown Men all unmoved see round the doors, Not round their own! “Not on the long-loved homelands, where The child drew in its earliest breath, For which the old hearts cease to care Only in death.” We hope, hope, hope; but whence, how brought, New light shall dawn, who may declare? We stumble on, too dark for thought, Too dim for prayer. “First last, last first,” so ran the word; As dull and bent we slowly grope, Above us, like some song of bird, Carols that hope. “First last, last first,” our hearts repeat; An azure gleam invades the ground, As when—heaven breaking ’neath the feet— Bluebells are found. As when, sore burdened, weary, we, With feet deep sunk in miry sod, Lift suddenly our eyes, and see The Hills of God. Hoping we pass. In grief, in mirth, Like wind-torn clouds our days flit by, Thin shadows of a shadowy earth, And a pale sky. We, and this land we tread, grow old, Its thoughts, loves, ways are strange and dark, Its ancient wrongs—a tale oft told— Men cease to mark. Its future? Nay, enough, enough! See where the hills o’ertop the plains, So smooth and vast, so poor and rough, Man’s lot remains! Not long their light the motes retain, The chequered arrows, towering all, Kiss the loved gleam; then find it wane, And, turning, fall. Striving we sink, fighting we fail, Stout soldiers in a losing cause, Out-fashioned knights whose ancient mail Breaks in new wars. Follows the dark, and sleep is dear; Dearest to those, the Hope Forlorn, Who, having toiled, scarce wait to hear The notes of Dawn. Who spent their day to heal the night, Who sowed that other men might reap, Whose simple guerdon is the right Soundly to sleep. Fetch laurels then, ye luckier swains, Who in some later hour are born, Whose barns brim over with the grains These sowed in scorn! Who, wandering through the Promised Land, And noting how its ramparts fall, Scarce heed where lies that earlier band, Hard by the wall. The men that fought, the men that failed, The men that struggled through the night, Remember!—Ye whose eyes have hailed Their longed-for light. Have seen it touch the smiling plain, And waken every lake and rill, Have watched its standards proudly gain Hill after hill. To you the prize, but theirs the praise, Coequal heirs in one wild Past, Spent mid the circles of a maze, Now ’scaped at last! Is that a dream? Ah! Who shall say Save One whose name we do but guess, Whose office—so we humbly pray— Is to redress? Whose coming? Nay, look up afar, Through seas whose brineless waves immerse The shores of that mysterious star Our Universe. Behold a gleam. The end! The end! O, dream of dreams. O, hope immense, On which thought, heart, love, soul attend, All life, all sense! Leave it close wrapped in silence, lest By some ill-omened note we mar A spell which, linking east to west, Binds star with star: And sweeps in one all-mastering flood Ocean and rill to the same goal, Gathers the tides of ill and good, Completes the Whole. With us meanwhile the rill still flows With us the little days speed fast And fast our changeful Present grows Our changeless Past. Island of faith, of hope, of pain, Home of a thousand varying fears, See you no light beyond your rain? Across your tears? Forbid it all the good, the strong, True friends, true lovers, grave or gay, Hatred and wrong endure for long, But not for aye. And not for ever bare and brown The boughs despoiled by autumn swing. Time, which draws down the winter’s frown, Restores the spring: Brings comfort to the wreck-strewn strand. To men long pressed by evil, right, And to a weary, cloud-girt land At Evening, light.