Page:Poems and ballads (IA poemsballads00swinrich).pdf/190

 Still shows him exile who will not be slave; All thy great fame and thee Girt by the dim strait sea With multitudinous walls of wandering wave; Shows us our greatest from his throne Fate-stricken, and rejected of his own.

Yea, he is strong, thou say’st, A mystery many-faced, The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee; The blind night sees him, death Shrinks beaten at his breath, And his right hand is heavy on the sea: We know he hath made us, and is king; We know not if he care for anything.

Thus much, no more, we know; He bade what is be so, Bade light be and bade night be, one by one; Bade hope and fear, bade ill And good redeem and kill, Till all men be aweary of the sun And his world burn in its own flame And bear no witness longer of his name.

Yet though all this be thus, Be those men praised of us Who have loved and wrought and sorrowed and not sinned