Poems (Greenwell)/To the Nineteenth Century
"In this book regard rather the affections than the expressions; Love is the speaker throughout, and if any one wish to understand it, it must be by Love."
St. Bernard on the Canticles.
TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
Thou Mother stern and proud,
That carest not to hear about thy knee
The singing of thy children; absently
Thou smilest on them, listening for the loud,
Quick crashing of thy chariot. What to thee
Is pastoral stop or reed? thy thoughts are vowed
To tasks of might, and thou thyself wilt be
Thy Poet, finding in thy stormy tunes
Rough music, leaving on the rock thy runes
So dinted deep, no Bard hath need to tell
The triumphs of a march where chronicle
And deed are one. What carest thou for praise
Of gentle-hearted singers! Thou wilt raise
The crown to thine own brows, and calmly claim
The Empire thou hast won; as yet no Name
Is thine to conjure with, as in the days
When Giants walked on earth,—a spell more clear
Is thine in thought, that makes an atmosphere
Where all things are gigantic! portents vast
Loom round thy path, where good and evil cast
Increasing shadows that the Evening near
Foreshow; as yet no Prophet doth appear
In all thy sons, and he among the rest
Most wise and honoured found, is but the Seer
That reads thy signs, interpreting the best!
That carest not to hear about thy knee
The singing of thy children; absently
Thou smilest on them, listening for the loud,
Quick crashing of thy chariot. What to thee
Is pastoral stop or reed? thy thoughts are vowed
To tasks of might, and thou thyself wilt be
Thy Poet, finding in thy stormy tunes
Rough music, leaving on the rock thy runes
So dinted deep, no Bard hath need to tell
The triumphs of a march where chronicle
And deed are one. What carest thou for praise
Of gentle-hearted singers! Thou wilt raise
The crown to thine own brows, and calmly claim
The Empire thou hast won; as yet no Name
Is thine to conjure with, as in the days
When Giants walked on earth,—a spell more clear
Is thine in thought, that makes an atmosphere
Where all things are gigantic! portents vast
Loom round thy path, where good and evil cast
Increasing shadows that the Evening near
Foreshow; as yet no Prophet doth appear
In all thy sons, and he among the rest
Most wise and honoured found, is but the Seer
That reads thy signs, interpreting the best!