Of other homestead than the arching sky, Is circled watchfully with seraph fires; How our own erring will it is that hangs The flaming sword o'er Eden's unclosed gate, Which gives free entrance to the pure in heart, And with its guarding walls doth fence the meek. Sleep then, O Earth, in thy blue-vaulted cradle, Bent over always by thy mother Heaven! We all are tall enough to reach God's hand, And angels are no taller: looking back Upon the smooth wake of a year o'erpast, We see the black clouds furling, one by one, From the advancing majesty of Truth, And something won for Freedom, whose least gain Is as a firm and rock-built citadel Wherefrom to launch fresh battle on her foes; Or, leaning from the time's extremest prow, If we gaze forward through the blinding spray, And dimly see how much of ill remains, How many fetters to be sawn asunder By the slow toil of individual zeal, Or haply rusted by salt tears in twain, We feel, with something of a sadder heart, Yet bracing up our bruisèd mail the while, And fronting the old foe with fresher spirit, How great it is to breathe with human breath, To be but poor foot-soldiers in the ranks Of our old exiled king, Humanity; Encamping after every hard-won field Nearer and nearer Heaven's happy plains. Many great souls have gone to rest, and sleep Under this armor, free and full of peace: If these have left the earth, yet Truth remains, Endurance, too, the crowning faculty Of noble minds, and Love, invincible By any weapons; and these hem us round With silence such that all the groaning clank Of this mad engine men have made of earth Dulls not some ears for catching purer tones, That wander from the dim surrounding vast, Or far more clear melodious prophecies, The natural music of the heart of man, Which by kind Sorrow's ministry hath learned That the true sceptre of all power is love And humbleness the palace-gate of truth. What man with soul so blind as sees not here The first faint tremble of Hope's morning-star, Foretelling how the God-forged shafts of dawn, Fitted already on their golden string, Shall soon leap earthward with exulting flight To thrid the dark heart of that evil faith Whose trust is in the clumsy arms of Force, The ozier hauberk of a ruder age? Freedom! thou other name for happy Truth, Thou warrior-maid, whose steel-clad feet were never Out of the stirrup, nor thy lance uncouched, Nor thy fierce eye enticèd from its watch, Thou hast learned now, by hero-blood in vain Poured to enrich the soil which tyrants reap; By wasted lives of prophets, and of those Who, by the promise in their souls upheld, Into the red arms of a fiery death Went blithely as the golden-girdled bee Sinks in the sleepy poppy's cup of flame By the long woes of nations set at war, That so the swollen torrent of their wrath May find a vent, else sweeping off like straws