The sense of large charity over the land, Earth’s wheaten of wisdom dispensed in the rough, And a bell ringing thanks for a sustenance meal Through the active machine: lean fare, But it carries a sparkle! And now enough, And part we as comrades part, To meet again never or some day or soon. Our season of drought is reminder rude:— No later than yesternoon, I looked on the horse of a cart, By the wayside water-trough. How at every draught of his bride of thirst His nostrils widened! The sight was good: Food for us, food, such as first Drew our thoughts to earth’s lowly for food. TO THE COMIC SPIRIT SWORD of Common Sense!— Our surest gift: the sacred chain Of man to man: firm earth for trust In structures vowed to permanence:— Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain! Implacable perforce of just; With that good treasure in defence, Which is our gold crushed out of joy and pain Since first men planted foot and hand was king: Bright, nimble of the marrow-nerve To wield thy double edge, retort Or hold the deadlier reserve, And through thy victim’s weapon sting: Thine is the service, thine the sport This shifty heart of ours to hunt Across its webs and round the many a ring Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster’s grunt;— Once lion of our desert’s trodden weeds; And but for thy straight finger at the yoke, Again to be the lordly paw, Naming his appetites his needs, Behind a decorative cloak: Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law We read upon that building’s architrave In the mind’s firmament, by men upraised With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed, Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw, Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn, Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang, Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot, Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn; Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise, Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen His rebel agitation at our root: Thou hast him out of hawking eyes; Nor ever morning of the clang Young Echo sped on hill from horn In forest blown when scent was keen Off earthy dews besprinkling blades Of covert grass more merrily rang The yelp of chase down alleys green, Forth of the headlong-pouring glades, Over the dappled fallows wild away, Than thy fine unaccented scorn At sight of man’s old secret brute, Devout for pasture on his prey, Advancing, yawning to devour; With step of deer, with voice of flute, Haply with visage of the lily flower.