And that great prodigies of ministrants
In aural loveliness would brood at night,
Extraordinary comforters, come down
To cope with like extraordinary pain.
But faith and all its then ambassadors
Have passed to some far corner of the skies
And left earth to its winter of desires,
Its ebb of passions and its leafless trees.
·····
When will that great age recommence
And all heaven's hosts in serried flights
Circle again in sudden immanence
About the earth and fill its days and nights
With lights and glooms and atmosphere intense?
When will that great age recommence
And many heroes come to birth?
When will men have again that sense
Of great things purposed on our earth
And issues toward of great significance?
When will that greater age return
And heaven draw near to earth again,
And thoughts of cosmic moment burn
Across our skies, and it grow plain
That mighty projects call to battle stern?
How are we fallen from our high estate
Who saw the dawn at Soissons that July
Rise upon pandemonium; heard, elate,
The trampling of the steeds of destiny,
And saw the flashes at the wheels of fate!
How are we fallen on another day
Whose life was a perpetual sacrament,
Supping with gods, and kneeling down to pray
In cataclysm when the world was rent,
As we strode shouting where the lightnings play!
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