Like warriors by an unknown foe,
The hands of men
Were in their strength subdued,
'Tis said that when
The love of years
Of which it doth now know,
Deep in the heart whose hope has died—
Of rivers glide
Gave instant birth
Are broken at a blow—
The virgin Earth
With the earlier tide
Within the heart
Do springs upstart
Sweet flowers, ere long,—
And hoary trees with groans of wo,
And strange, sweet dreams,
Like silent streams
The rare and radiant flowers of song!
Perfumed the gale,
And the fine fibrils of its life
And the queenly lily adown the dale
That from new fountains overflow,
Did rivulets run,
That in the sun
The wild rose pale
Is wasted like the snow,
By the rude wrong of instant strife
Quenching the fires its ashes hide,—
With the gourd and the grape luxuriant grew.
(Whom the sun and the dew
And all around rare flowers did blow—
So when in tears
Its ashes, whence will spring and grow
And the winds did woo),
Tamed this primeval wood,
To springs that ne'er did flow—