IV. THE STANDARDS.
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hat last,Blown from our Sion of the Seven Hills,Was no uncertain blast!Listen: the warning all the champaign fills,And minatory murmurs, answering, marThe Night, both near and far,Perplexing many a drowsy citadelBeneath whose ill-watch'd walls the Powers of Hell,With armed jarAnd angry threat, surceaseTheir long-kept compact of contemptuous peace!Lo, yonder, where our little English band,With peace in heart and wrath in hand,Have dimly ta'en their stand,Sweetly the lightShines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,Whence, o'er the dawning Land,Gleam the gold blazonries of Love irate'Gainst the black flag of Hate. {62}Envy not, little band,Your brothers under the Hohenzollern hoofPut to the splendid proof.Your hour is near!The spectre-haunted time of idle Night,Your only fear,Thank God, is done,And Day and War, Man's work-time and delight,Begun.Ho, ye of the van there, veterans great of cheer,Look to your footing, when, from yonder verge,The wish'd Sun shall emerge;Lest once again the Flower of Sharon bloomAfter a way the Stalk call heresy.Strange splendour and strange gloomAlike confuse the pathOf customary faith;And when the dim-seen mountains turn to flameAnd every roadside atom is a spark,The dazzled sense, that used was to the dark,May well doubt, 'Is't the safe way and the sameBy which we cameFrom Egypt, and to Canaan mean to go?'But know,The clearness then so marvellously increas'd,The light'ning shining Westward from the East,Is the great promised signOf His victorious and divineApproach, whose coming in the clouds shall be,As erst was His humility,A stumbling unto some, the first bid to the Feast.Cry, Ho!Good speed to them that come and them that goFrom either gathering host,And, after feeble, false allegiance, now first knowTheir post.Ho, yeWho loved our FlagOnly because there flapp'd none other ragWhich gentlemen might doff to, and such be,'Save your gentility!For leagued, alas, are weWith many a faithful rogueDiscrediting bright Truth with dirt and brogue;And flatterers, too,That still would sniff the grassAfter the 'broider'd shoe,And swear it smelt like musk where He did pass,Though he were Borgia or Caiaphas.Ho, yeWho dread the bondage of the boundless fieldsWhich Heaven's allegiance yields,And, like to house-hatch'd finches, hop not freeUnless 'tween walls of wire,Look, there be many cages: choose to your desire!Ho, ye,Of God the least beloved, of Man the most,That like not leaguing with the lesser host,Behold the invested Mount,And that assaulting Sea with ne'er a coast.You need not stop to count!But come up, yeWho adore, in any way,Our God by His wide-honour'd Name of YEA.Come up; for where ye stand ye cannot stay.Come allThat either mood of heavenly joyance know,And, on the ladder hierarchical,Have seen the order'd Angels to and froDescending with the pride of service sweet,Ascending, with the rapture of receipt!Come who have felt, in soul and heart and sense,The entire obedienceWhich opes the bosom, like a blissful wife,To the Husband of all life!Come ye that find contentment's very coreIn the light storeAnd daisied pathOf Poverty,And know how moreA small thing that the righteous hathAvaileth than the ungodly's riches great.Come likewise yeWhich do not yet disown as out of dateThat brightest third of the dead Virtues three,Of Love the crown elateAnd daintiest glee!Come up, come up, and join our little band.Our time is near at hand.The sanction of the world's undying hateMeans more than flaunted flags in windy air.Be ye of gathering fateNow gladly ware.Now from the matrix, by God's grinding wrought,The brilliant shall be brought;The white stone mystic set between the eyesOf them that get the prize;Yea, part and parcel of that mighty StoneWhich shall be thrownInto the Sea, and Sea shall be no more.
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