What prayers importunate had stormed the heavens
Loosing the Angels of Benignity,
Or what far Breath had swept the morning sky
Filling the April winds with tumult sweet —
Nor dream nor story tells. But one high will,
The will for peace after the will for war,
Man's wiser will, was moving on the earth,
Fronting the vistas of the world's New Day.

They rose to part; and standing face to face
Within the circle of their battle-peers,
And at the threshold of life's roomier prime,
They symboled two contrasting periods;
They framed the ancient and the modern times —
The ancient age of Aristocracy,
The modern era of Democracy,
The Old recoiling on its hastened doom
Before the bannered advent of the New.
And there the Heavenly Spirit, brooding, moved
Again upon the face of darkling wastes,
And all the clangorous heralds of God's Hour
Sounded Love's holy chimes of Liberty
And Union ringing round a waiting world.