Poems (Greenwell)/To the Nineteenth Century

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"In this book regard rather the affections than the expressions; Love is the speaker throughout, and if any one wish to understand it, it must be by Love."

St. Bernard on the Canticles.

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TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
   Thou Mother stern and proud, That carest not to hear about thy knee The singing of thy children; absently  Thou smilest on them, listening for the loud, Quick crashing of thy chariot. What to thee  Is pastoral stop or reed? thy thoughts are vowed To tasks of might, and thou thyself wilt be  Thy Poet, finding in thy stormy tunes  Rough music, leaving on the rock thy runes So dinted deep, no Bard hath need to tell The triumphs of a march where chronicle  And deed are one. What carest thou for praise  Of gentle-hearted singers! Thou wilt raise The crown to thine own brows, and calmly claim The Empire thou hast won; as yet no Name  Is thine to conjure with, as in the days When Giants walked on earth,—a spell more clear Is thine in thought, that makes an atmosphere Where all things are gigantic! portents vast Loom round thy path, where good and evil cast ​Increasing shadows that the Evening near Foreshow; as yet no Prophet doth appear  In all thy sons, and he among the rest Most wise and honoured found, is but the Seer  That reads thy signs, interpreting the best!
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