They loved their minstrel's harp. The songs he sang Were songs to brighten gentle hearts; to fire Strong hearts with holier courage; hope to breathe Through spirits despondent, o'er the childless floor Or widowed bed, flashing from highest heaven A beam half faith, half vision. Many a tear, His own, and tears of those that listened, fell Oft as he sang that hand, lovely as light, Forth stretched, and gathering from forbidden boughs That fruit fatal to man. He sang the Flood, Sin's doom that quelled the impure, yet raised to height Else inaccessible, the just. He sang That patriarch facing at divine command The illimitable waste--then, harder proof, Lifting his knife o'er him, the seed foretold; He sang of Israel loosed, the ten black seals Down pressed on Egypt's testament of woe, Covenant of pride with penance; sang the face Of Moses glittering from red Sinai's rocks, The Tables twain, and Mandements of God. On Christian nights he sang that jubilant star Which led the Magians to the Bethlehem crib By Joseph watched, and Mary. Pale, in Lent, Tremulous and pale, he told of Calvary, Nor added word, but, as in trance, rehearsed That Passion fourfold of the Evangelists, Which, terrible and swift--not like a tale-- With speed of things which must be done, not said, A river of bale, from guilty age to age Along the astonied shores of common life Annual makes way, the history of the world, Not of one day, one People. To its fount That stream he tracked, that primal mystery sang Which, chanted later by a thousand years, Music celestial, though with note that jarred, Some wandering orb troubling its starry chime, Amazed the nations, 'There was war in heaven: Michael and they, his angels, warfare waged With Satan and his angels.' Brief that war, That ruin total. Brief was Ceadmon's song: Therein the Eternal Face was undivulged: Therein the Apostate's form no grandeur wore: The grandeur was elsewhere. Who hate their God Change not alone to vanquished but to vile. On Easter morns he sang the Saviour Risen, Eden Regained. Since then on England's shores Though many sang, yet no man sang like him.