Thou lookest down from thy door the golden,
Nor batest thy wide-shining mirth,
As the ramparts fall, and the roof-trees olden
Lie smouldering low on the burning earth.
When flitteth the half-dark night of summer
From the face of the murder great and grim,
'Tis thou thyself and no new-comer
Shines golden-bright on the deed undim.
Art thou our friend, O Day-dawn's Lover?
Full oft thine hand hath sent aslant
Bright beams athwart the Wood-bear's cover,
Where the feeble folk and the nameless haunt.
Thou hast seen us quail, thou hast seen us cower,
Thou hast seen us crouch in the Green Abode,
While for us wert thou slaying slow hour by hour,
And smoothing down the war-rough road.
Yea, the rocks of the Waste were thy Dawns upheaving,
To let the days of the years go through;
And thy Noons the tangled brake were cleaving
The slow-foot seasons' deed to do.
Then gaze adown on this gift of our giving,
For the WOLF comes wending frith and ford,
And the Folk fares forth from the dead to the living,
For the love of the Lief by the light of the Sword.
Then ceased the song, and the whole band of the Woodlanders came
pouring tumultuously into the space allotted them, like the waters
pouring over a river-dam, their white swords waving aloft in the
morning sunlight; and wild and strange cries rose up from amidst
them, with sobbing and weeping of joy.
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