Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts 18601943Autochthon
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To swell the grain,
When fruitful suns confer
With laboring rain;
I am the life that thrills
In branch and bloom;
I am the patience of abiding hills,
The promise masked in doom.
And storms are out,
And giant woods give tongue,
I am the shout;
And when the earth would sleep,
Wrapped in her snows,
I am the infinite gleam of eyes that keep
The post of her repose.
I am the speed,
The flood-tide’s triumphing psalm,
The marsh-pool’s heed;
I work in the rocking roar
Where cataracts fall;
I flash in the prismy fire that dances o’er
The dew’s ephemeral ball.
And wave and tree,
Of stern desires and blind,
Of strength to be;
I am the cry by night
At point of dawn,
The summoning bugle from the unseen height,
In cloud and doubt withdrawn.
The stature of man,
The pang no hero escapes,
The blessing, the ban;
I am the hammer that moulds
The iron of our race,
The omen of God in our blood that a people beholds,
The foreknowledge veiled in our face.