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I ON through the Libyan sand | |
| Rolls ever, mile on mile, | |
| League on long league, cleaving the rainless land, | |
| Fed by no friendly wave, the immemorial Nile. | |
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II Down through the cloudless air, | 5 |
| Undimm’d, from heaven’s sheer height, | |
| Bend their inscrutable gaze, austere and bare, | |
| In long-proceeding pomp, the stars of Libyan night. | |
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III Beneath the stars, beside the unpausing flood, | |
| Earth trembles at the wandering lion’s roar; | 10 |
| Trembles again, when in blind thirst of blood | |
| Sweep the wild tribes along the startled shore. | |
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IV They sweep and surge and struggle, and are gone: | |
| The mournful desert silence reigns again, | |
| The immemorial River rolleth on, | 15 |
| The order’d stars gaze blank upon the plain. | |
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V O awful Presence of the lonely Nile, | |
| O awful Presence of the starry sky, | |
| Lo, in this little while | |
| Unto the mind’s trueseeing inward eye | 20 |
| There hath arisen there | |
| Another haunting Presence as sublime, | |
| As great, as sternly fair; | |
| Yea, rather fairer far | |
| Than stream, or sky, or star, | 25 |
| To live while star shall burn or river roll, | |
| Unmarr’d by marring Time, | |
| The crown of Being, a heroic soul. | |
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VI Beyond the weltering tides of worldly change | |
| He saw the invisible things, | 30 |
| The eternal Forms of Beauty and of Right; | |
| Wherewith well pleas’d his spirit wont to range, | |
| Rapt with divine delight, | |
| Richer than empires, royaler than kings. | |
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VII Lover of children, lord of fiery fight, | 35 |
| Saviour of empires, servant of the poor, | |
| Not in the sordid scales of earth, unsure, | |
| Deprav’d, adulterate, | |
| He measur’d small and great, | |
| But by some righteous balance wrought in heaven, | 40 |
| To his pure hand by Powers empyreal given; | |
| Therewith, by men unmov’d, as God he judged aright. | |
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VIII As on the broad sweet-water’d river tost | |
| Falls some poor grain of salt, | |
| And melts to naught, nor leaves embittering trace; | 45 |
| As in the o’er-arching vault | |
| With unrepell’d assault | |
| A cloudy climbing vapor, lightly lost, | |
| Vanisheth utterly in the starry space; | |
| So from our thought, when his enthron’d estate | 50 |
| We inly contemplate, | |
| All wrangling phantoms fade, and leave us face to face. | |
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IX Dwell in us, sacred spirit, as in thee | |
| Dwelt the eternal Love, the eternal Life, | |
| Nor dwelt in only thee; not thee alone | 55 |
| We honor reverently, | |
| But in thee all who in some succoring strife, | |
| By day or dark, world-witness’d or unknown, | |
| Crush’d by the crowd, or in late harvest hail’d, | |
| Warring thy war have triumph’d, or have fail’d. | 60 |
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X Nay, but not only there | |
| Broods thy great Presence, o’er the Libyan plain. | |
| It haunts a kindlier clime, a dearer air, | |
| The liberal air of England, thy lov’d home. | |
| Thou through her sunlit clouds and flying rain | 65 |
| Breathe, and all winds that sweep her island shore— | |
| Rough fields of riven foam, | |
| Where in stern watch her guardian breakers roar. | |
| Ay, thron’d with all her mighty memories, | |
| Wherefrom her nobler sons their nurture draw, | 70 |
| With all of good or great | |
| For aye incorporate | |
| That rears her race to faith and generous shame, | |
| To high-aspiring awe, | |
| To hate implacable of thick thronging lies, | 75 |
| To scorn of gold and gauds and clamorous fame; | |
| With all we guard most dear and most divine, | |
| All records rank’d with thine, | |
| Here be thy home, brave soul, thy undecaying shrine. | |
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