Poems (Greenwell)/To the Nineteenth Century

by Dora Greenwell

"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!