19.

Nor less the light of story than of song
  With graver glories girt his godlike head,
Reverted alway from the temporal throng
  Of lives that live not toward the living dead. 
The shadows and the splendours of their throng
  Made bright and dark about his board and bed
The lines of life and vision, sweet or strong
  With sound of lutes or trumpets blown, that led
      Forth of the ghostly gate
      Opening in spite of fate
  Shapes of majestic or tumultuous tread,
      Divine and direful things,
      These foul as priests or kings,
  Those fair as heaven or love or freedom, red
    With blood and green with palms and white
With raiment woven of deeds divine and words of light.

20.

The thunder-fire of Cromwell, and the ray
  That keeps the place of Phocion’s name serene
And clears the cloud from Kosciusko’s day,
  Alternate as dark hours with bright between,
Met in the heaven of his high thought, which lay
  For all stars open that all eyes had seen
Rise on the night or twilight of the way
  Where feet of human hopes and fears had been. 
      Again the sovereign word
      On Milton’s lips was heard
  Living:  again the tender three days’ queen
      Drew bright and gentle breath
      On the sharp edge of death: 
  And, staged again to show of mortal scene,
    Tiberius, ere his name grew dire,
Wept, stainless yet of empire, tears of blood and fire.

21.

Most ardent and most awful and most fond,
  The fervour of his Apollonian eye
Yearned upon Hellas, yet enthralled in bond
  Of time whose years beheld her and past by
Silent and shameful, till she rose and donned
  The casque again of Pallas; for her cry
Forth of the past and future, depths beyond
  This where the present and its tyrants lie,
      As one great voice of twain
      For him had pealed again,
  Heard but of hearts high as her own was high,
      High as her own and his
      And pure as love’s heart is,
  That lives though hope at once and memory die: 
    And with her breath his clarion’s blast
Was filled as cloud with fire or future souls with past.

22.

As a wave only obsequious to the wind
  Leaps to the lifting breeze that bids it leap,
Large-hearted, and its thickening mane be thinned
  By the strong god’s breath moving on the deep
From utmost Atlas even to extremest Ind
  That shakes the plain where no men sow nor reap,
So, moved with wrath toward men that ruled and sinned
  And pity toward all tears he saw men weep,
      Arose to take man’s part
      His loving lion heart,
  Kind as the sun’s that has in charge to keep
      Earth and the seed thereof
      Safe in his lordly love,
  Strong as sheer truth and soft as very sleep;
    The mightiest heart since Milton’s leapt,
The gentlest since the gentlest heart of Shakespeare slept.