Page:The Muse in Arms, Osborn (ed), 1917.djvu/228

 LXXIX

H! Time hath loaded thee with memories

Processional. What could these piles unfold

Of war's lost travail, and the wearied cries

Of vexèd warriors, struggling to hold

Their hearth secure against proud Norman arms?

—And yet the while thy quest was not forgot;

'Mid war and waste and perilous alarms

Ever thy purpose stood, and yielded not.

Noble in faith, gallant in chivalry,

Thou flung'st a radiant word to all the land,—

Pluck'd from the wealth of thy philosophy,

And to the world upon the breezes strewn;—

When, great with loyalty, thou didst withstand

The kingly perjurer in battle brave:

While England's Lady by the Winter's boon

Fled from thy peril o'er the frozen wave.

What need to tell of all thy generous sons?—

The priestly Theobald, and in his train

Master Vacarius, mighty in old law,

And the great multitudes that now remain

But shadows flitting in dim pageantry 186