Page:A midsummer holiday and other poems (IA midsummerholiday00swin).pdf/143



O Lords our Gods, the times are evil: you Redeem the time, because of evil days. While abject souls in servitude of praise Bow down to heads untitled, and the crew Whose honour dwells but in the deeds they do, From loftier hearts your nobler servants raise More manful salutation: yours are bays That not the dawn's plebeian pearls bedew; Yours, laurels plucked not of such hands as wove Old age its chaplet in Colonos' grove. Our time, with heaven and with itself at odds, Makes all lands else as seas that seethe and boil; But yours are yet the corn and wine and oil, And yours our worship yet, O Lords our Gods.