Some in the welter of this surging tide
  Move like the mystic lamps, the Spirits Seven,
Their burning love runs kindling far and wide,
  That fire they needed not to steal from heaven,
’Twas a free gift flung down with them to bide,
  And be a comfort for the hearts bereaven,
A warmth, a glow, to make the failing store
And parsimony of emotion more.

What glorious dreams in that find harbourage,
  The phantom of a crime stalks this beside,
And those might well have writ on some past page,
  In such an hour, of such a year, we—­died,
Put out our souls, took the mean way, false wage,
  Course cowardly; and if we be denied
The life once loved, we cannot alway rue
The loss; let be:  what vails so sore ado.

And faces pass of such as give consent
  To live because ’tis not worth while to die;
This never knew the awful tremblement
  When some great fear sprang forward suddenly,
Its other name being hope—­and there forthwent
  As both confronted him a rueful cry
From the heart’s core, one urging him to dare,
‘Now! now!  Leap now.’  The other, ‘Stand, forbear.’

A nation reared in brick.  How shall this be? 
  Nor by excess of life death overtake. 
To die in brick of brick her destiny,
  And as the hamadryad eats the snake
His wife, and then the snake his son, so she
  Air not enough, ’though everyone doth take
A little,’ water scant, a plague of gold,
Light out of date—­a multitude born old.

And then a three-day siege might be the end;
  E’en now the rays get muddied struggling down
Through heaven’s vasty lofts, and still extend
  The miles of brick and none forbid, and none
Forbode; a great world-wonder that doth send
  High fame abroad, and fear no setting sun,
But helpless she through wealth that flouts the day
And through her little children, even as they.

But forth of London, and all visions dear
  To eastern poets of a watered land
Are made the commonplace of nature here,
  Sweet rivers always full, and always bland. 
Beautiful, beautiful!  What runlets clear
  Twinkle among the grass.  On every hand
Fall in the common talk from lips around
The old names of old towns and famous ground.

It is not likeness only charms the sense,
  Not difference only sets the mind aglow,
It is the likeness in the difference,
  Familiar language spoken on the snow,
To have the Perfect in the Present tense,
  To hear the ploughboy whistling, and to know,
It smacks of the wild bush, that tune—­’Tis ours,
And look! the bank is pale with primrose flowers,

What veils of tender mist make soft the lea,
  What bloom of air the height; no veils confer
On warring thought or softness or degree
  Or rest.  Still falling, conquering, strife and stir. 
For this religion pays indemnity. 
  She pays her enemies for conquering her. 
And then her friends; while ever, and in vain
Lots for a seamless coat are cast again.