Frederick George Scott

Like some grey warder who, with mien sedate And smile of welcome, greets the throngs who pour Between the portals of a wide-thrown door, stands guardian at our water gate, And watches from her battlemented state The great ships passing …

The great world's heart is aching, aching fiercely in the night, And God alone can heal it, and God alone give light; And the men to bear that message, and to speak the living word, Are you and I, my brothers, and the millions that have …

for me will be five hundred years of catching trains and two thousand years of remembering names.

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 …

They saw the stars in heaven hung, They saw the great Sea's birth, They know the ancient pain that wrung The entrails of the Earth.

Something in my inmost thinking Tells me I am one with you, For a subtle bond is linking Nature's offspring through and through.

Oh, linger, little river! Your banks are all so fair, Each morning is a hymn of praise, Each evening is a prayer. All day the sunbeams glitter On your shallows and your bars,

One doom waits all — art, speech, law, gods, and men, Forests and mountains, stars and shining sun, — The hand that made them shall unmake again, I curse them and they wither one by one.Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod, …

In lonely gorge and over hill and plain, I sowed the giant forests of the world; The great earth like a human heart in pain Has quivered with the meteors I have hurled.

The immortal spirit hath no bars To circumscribe its dwelling-place; My soul hath pastured with the stars Upon the meadow-lands of space.

The pulse of our life is in tune with the rhythm of forces that beat In the surf of the farthest star's sea, and are spent and regathered to spend.

It sleeps among the thousand hills Where no man ever trod, And only nature's music fills The silences of God.

Sweet house of God, sweet earth, so full of pleasure, I enter at thy gates in storm or calm; And every sunbeam is a joy or pleasure, And every cloud a solace and a balm.

Right hath the sweeter grace, But Wrong the prettier face.

Give me splendour in my death — Not this sickening dungeon breath, Creeping down my blood like slime, Till it wastes me in my prime.Give me back for one blind hour, Half my former rage and power, And some giant crisis send,

Clay was I; the potter Thou With Thy thumb-nail smooth'dst my brow, Rolltdst the spittle-moistened sands Into limbs between Thy hands. [...] Strong Thou mad'st me, till at length

So often have I met death face to face, His eyes now wear the welcome of a friend's.

'Oh, curses on you hand and head, Like the rains in this wild weather The guilt of blood is swift and dread, Your sister's face is cold and dead, Ye may not part whom God would wed And love hath knit together.'

'How slayeth Sin?' First, God is hid, And the heart within By its own self chid; Then the maddened brain Is scourged by pain

'Is Sin, then, fair?' Nay, love, come now, Put back the hair From his sunny brow; See, here, blood-red Across his head

I saw Time in his workshop carving faces; Scattered around his tools lay, blunting griefs, Sharp cares that cut out deeply in reliefs Of light and shade: sorrows that smooth the traces Of what were smiles.

Growing to full manhood now, With the care-lines on our brow, We, the youngest of the nations, With no childish lamentations, Weep, as only strong men weep, For the noble hearts that sleep,