Frederick George Scott (1861–1944)

FIERCE on this bastion beats the noonday sun;

The city sleeps beneath me, old and grey;

On convent roofs the quivering sunbeams play,

And batteries guarded by dismantled gun.

No breeze comes from the northern hills that run

Circling the blue mist of the summer’s day;

No ripple stirs the great stream on its way

To those dim headlands where its rest is won.

Ah God, what thunders shook these crags of yore,

What smoke of battle rolled about this place,

What strife of worlds in pregnant agony!

Now all is hushed, yet here, in dreams, once more

We catch the echoes, ringing back from space,

Of God’s strokes forging human history.