Which, for long ages in blank Chaos dumb, Yet yearned to be incarnate, and had found From which it might leap forth to bless mankind,— Not to the soul of Newton, ripe with all The hoarded thoughtfulness of earnest years, And waiting but one ray of sunlight more To blossom fully. But whence came that ray? We call our sorrows Destiny, but ought Only the instincts of great souls are Fate, Still moving in us, the last fragment left Within our thought, to beckon us beyond As all things must that overrule the soul, And for a space unseat the helmsman, Will. The fate of England and of freedom once In the eternal round from wisdom on To higher wisdom, had been made to pause A hundred years. That step he did not take,- More full of majesty, than any throne, Upon the pier stood two stern-visaged men, Looking to where a little craft lay moored, Swayed by the lazy current of the Thames, Which weltered by in muddy listlessness. Grave men they were, and battlings of fierce thought Had trampled out all softness from their brows, And ploughed rough furrows there before their time, For other crop than such as homebred Peace Sows broadcast in the willing soil of Youth. Care, not of self, but of the common weal, Had robbed their eyes of youth, and left instead A look of patient power and iron will, And something fiercer, too, that gave broad hint That would have matched his sinewy, brown face. (Care makes so little of some five short years,) Had a clear, honest face, whose rough-hewn strength Was mildened by the scholar's wiser heart To sober courage, such as best befits The unsullied temper of a well-taught mind, Yet so remained that one could plainly guess "O, CROMWELL, we are fallen on evil times! Turns squeamish at them both. Therefore let us Give us but that, and what need we to fear Will not say, No, to please a wayward king, Will watch as kindly o'er the Exodus We have no cloud or fire, and haply we May not pass dry-shod through the ocean-stream; But, saved or lost, all things are in His hand." “ HAMPDEN! a moment since, my purpose was To fly with thee, for I will call it flight, But something in me bids me not to go; And makes the wicked but his instruments In the King's order: blind, he will not let |