Page:A midsummer holiday and other poems (IA midsummerholiday00swin).pdf/64

 Dawn and the beams of sunbright song illume Love, with strange children at her piteous breast, By grace of weakness from the grave-mouthed gloom Plucked, and by mercy lulled to living rest, Soft as the nursling's nigh the grandsire's tomb That fell on sleep, a bird of rifled nest; Soft as the lips whose smile unsaid the doom That gave their sire to violent death's arrest. Even for such love's sake strong, Wrath fires the inveterate song That bids hell gape for one whose bland mouth blest All slayers and liars that sighed Prayer as they slew and lied Till blood had clothed his priesthood as a vest, And hears, though darkness yet be dumb, The silence of the trumpet of the wrath to come.