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34 Repaid their hate with cheerful glee.

Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died, For public hope grew pale and dim In an altered time and tide, And in its wasting withered him, As a summer flower that blows too soon Droops in the smile of the waning moon, When it scatters through an April night The frozen dews of wrinkling blight. None now hoped more. Grey Power was seated Safely on her ancestral throne; And Faith, the Python, undefeated, Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on Her foul and wounded train, and men Were trampled and deceived again, And words and shews again could bind The wailing tribes of human kind In scorn and famine. Fire and blood Raged round the raging multitude, To fields remote by tyrants sent To be the scorned instrument With which they drag from mines of gore The chains their slaves yet ever wore: And in the streets men met each other, And by old altars and in halls, And smiled again at festivals. But each man found in his heart's brother Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived, The outworn creeds again believed, And the same round anew began, Which the weary world yet ever ran.

Many then wept, not tears, but gall Within their hearts, like drops which fall