For lo! the crown'd Statesman of Law, Justinian himself of his realm, Edward, since Alfred our wisest of all who have watch'd by the helm! He who yet preaches in silence his life-word, the light of his way, From his marble unadorn'd chest, in the heart of the West Minster gray, _Keep thy Faith_ . . . In the great town-twilight, this city of gloom, --O how unlike that blithe London he look'd on!--I look on his tomb, In the circle of kings, round the shrine, where the air is heavy with fame, Dust of our moulder'd chieftains, and splendour shrunk to a name. Silent synod august, ye that tried the delight and the pain, Trials and snares of a throne, was the legend written in vain? Speak, for ye know, crown'd shadows! who down each narrow and strait As ye might, once guided,--a perilous passage,--the keel of the State, Fourth Henry, fourth Edward, Elizabeth, Charles,--now ye rest from your toil, Was it best, when by truth and compass ye steer'd, or by statecraft and guile? Or is it so hard, that steering of States, that as men who throw in With party their life, honour soils his own ermine, a lie is no sin? . . . --Not so, great Edward, with thee,--not so!--For he learn'd in his youth The step straightforward and sure, the proud, bright bearing of truth:-- Arm'd against Simon at Evesham, yet not less, striking for Law,-- Ages of temperate freedom, a vision of order, he saw!-- --Vision of opulent years, a murmur of welfare and peace: Orchard golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase; Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine; Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;-- Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance, Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes, Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies. Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation with nation unite! Hand clasp'd frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight: On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl'd men of the north, Genoa's brown-neck'd sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth: Freights of the south; drugs potent o'er death from the basilisk won, Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:-- Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene's vintage of old, Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold: Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine, Graved by Athenian diamond with forms of beauty divine. To the quay from the gabled alleys, the huddled ravines of the town, Twilights of jutting lattice and beam, the Guild-merchants come down, Cheapening the gifts of the south, the sea-borne alien bales, For the snow-bright fleeces of Leom'ster, the wealth of Devonian vales; While above them, the cavernous gates, on which knight-robbers have gazed Hopeless, in peace look down, their harrows of iron upraised; And Dustyfoot enters at will with his gay Autolycus load,