The Visions of England

? Life's tide flows once and passes; but o'er thee Man's generations wave on wave have swept: ?Here first their guard the Imperial eagles kept 'Gainst native liberty; Here, in the night of history, Saxon, Dane, And those stern landlords from the Neustrian coast, ?Three names of one three-headed Northern host, Slayers in turn and slain,? With wide-eyed wonder by the pile might stand, And touch, and climb, and hold thee for some fort By Nature moulded in colossal sport, Or work of Jotun hand :? Or some hoar pilgrim-king from Peter's shrine Here found his Rome beneath another air, And built his hut within the shelter'd square; And saw the gray marsh line, Green bluffs around, and sinuous streams that go, E'en as we see them; while the lark on high Hung o'er the field, and with the same sweet cry Fell on his nest below; And Nature ran her course immutable : The castle wheatfield ripen'd to the sheaf Through green to ruddy waves; the elmen leaf Thinn'd into gold, and fell And moulder'd,?as we moulder:?O brief race Of man ! O toy of Nature ! whom the oak O'erlives, that lives to earn the woodman's stroke; Who sees his little space Of being by the raven's years o'erpass'd, Or the green babbler of the blazing Line:? While nations rise and blossom and decline, And these strong bulwarks last Outbraving creeds and dynasties and chiefs And hearts of men and women, that once beat Numerous past number, each a world complete Of loves and hopes ...