Belgium, thy name great glory hath;
When might to baseness stooped, thy wrath
Withstood him in the battle path.

The towers that might have been thy trust
They burned and razed and beat to dust—
Still wast thou valiant and august.

We treasure all thy deathless tears;
No quenching through the endless years
Thy silent, solemn grandeur fears.

On every sea, on every strand,
Thy name for faithfulness shall stand,
Belgium, the brave, immortal land!

The everlasting years shall ring,
While sun shall shine or heart shall sing,

An angel burdened with self-pity
Came out of heaven to a modern city.

He saw a beggar on the street,
Where the tides of traffic meet.

A pair of brass-bound hickory pegs
Brought him his pence instead of legs.

A murky dog by him did lie,
Poodle, in part, his ancestry.

The angel stood and thought upon
This poodle-haunted beggar man.

“My life is grown a bore,” said he,
“One long round of sciamachy;

I think I'll do a little good,
By way of change from angelhood.”

He drew near to the beggar grim,

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
And church and yew-tree opposite, in age
Its equals and in size. Small church, great yew,
And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness:
The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,
With tiles duskily glowing, entertained
The midday sun; and up and down the roof

Where is it, righteousness, And I, poor sot, ah where?
Where is the path that joins This and that lot, ah where?

What hath devoutness to do And virtue with winebibbing?
Where is the preacher's drone And the wail of the rote, ah where?

My heart from the cloister-cell And hypocrisy's patch-coat turns:
Where is the wine unmixed And the Magians' grot, ah where?

Gone are the days of delight: Fair may their memory be!
Where is the languishing glance And the chiding, love-fraught, ah where?

What doth it profit the foe To look on the face of the Friend?

Weary of life? But what if death
To new confusion bids?
Who knows if labor ends with breath,
Or tears with folded lids?

The spirit still may miss of rest,
Though oft the daisies blow
Above the hushed and darkened breast
Shut close from sun and snow.

Those halls, all curiously planned,
Lie void, but whither thence
Hath fled the tenant? Shall the wand
Of peace her dews dispense

In equal share to hearts that beat
Undaunted till the even,
And rebels whose unbidden feet
Would storm the heights of heaven?

Where Jessie wrought her mission out—
A shortened chain of April days—
And stirred my faith and slew my doubt,
And woke the nursling Hope to praise.
There lingers yet some subtle trace
Through all the woodland solitude,
Some wistful beauty from her face,
Some touch of her dead maidenhood.

Her home was near, and in this glade
She told me of the Golden Gate,
With sweet-souled counsel wisely weighed
And faith that had not long to wait.
So have I made my journey here
Where first I found the Golden Way,
And learned how life has less of fear

If they true bailiffs be, who for the law maintaining,
Do orphans overwhelm, and widows terrify,
And hamlets gobble up, the poor with sport disdaining,
I know not; but, I trow, a schout should ever try
To have the law of God and sovereign rights possess him,
The wrong with power by right and not by wrong suppressing.

No charm nor loveliness nor joy is stable.
Glory unfolded for a world's delight
Fades like a lover's tale, a song, a fable
Blown over by the cruel breath of reason
And lost to sound and sight.
Beauty that bourgeoned slowly through a season
Dies in a night.

For beauty dead we fill our hearts with weeping,
Yet never mark it pass beyond recall.
Shall only I, who once, like all men, sleeping
Felt not my gold transmute to baser metal,
With wakened eyes, see, bitterest of all,
Pale-hued and dark, petal by lovely petal
My silken poppies fall?

God bless the field and bless the furrow,
Stream and branch and rabbit burrow,
Hill and stone and flower and tree,
From Bristol town to Wetherby—
Bless the sun and bless the sleet,
Bless the lane and bless the street,
Bless the night and bless the day,
From Somerset and all the way
To the meadows of Cathay;
Bless the minnow, bless the whale,
Bless the rainbow and the hail,
Bless the nest and bless the leaf,
Bless the righteous and the thief,
Bless the wing and bless the fin,
Bless the air I travel in,
Bless the mill and bless the mouse,

Ten months after Florimel happen'd to wed,
And was brought in a laudable manner to bed,
She warbl'd her groans with so charming a voice,
That one half of the parish was stunn'd with the noise.
But when Florimel deign'd to lie privately in,
Ten months before she and her spouse were a-kin,
She chose with such prudence her pangs to conceal,
That her nurse, nay her midwife, scarce heard her once squeal.
Learn, husbands, from hence, for the peace of your lives,
That maids make not half such a tumult, as wives.