Classic Poem

HALF-HEARIED men we creep
Along our listless way,
And where we sowed but yesterday,
E'en now presumptuous would reap.
We stir the root
And see no tender shoot;
Too fine the work of grace for our rude eye.
Then in proud wrath
Turn on our homeward path,
Leaving th' untended plant in the bleak air to die.

Not so the unwearied Saints,
Yet shadowing with their prayers
The fallen land that erst was theirs:
Where they repose hope never faints.
There, day or night,
Before that altar bright
They kneel, if haply from its stores benign,
One healing ray
May dart its downward way,
In course unerring towards some English shrine.