THE INALIENABLE HERITAGE
I
I
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!
II
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.
III
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.
IV
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.