Gordon

On through the Libyan sand
Rolls ever, mile en mile,
League on long league, cleaving the rainless land,
Fed by no friendly wave, the immemorial Nile.
II.

Down through the cloudless air,
Undimmed, from heaven's sheer height,
Bend their inscrutable gaze, austere and bare,
In long-proceeding pomp, the stars of Libyan night.
III.

Beneath the stars, beside the unpausing flood,
Earth trembles at the wandering lion's roar;
Trembles again, when in blind thirst of blood
Sweep the wild tribes along the startled shore.
IV.

They sweep and surge and struggle, and are gone:
The mournful desert silence reigns again,
The immemorial River rolleth on,
The ordered stars gaze blank upon the plain.
O awful Presence of the lonely Nile,

O awful Presence of the starry sky,
Lo, in this little while
Unto the mind's true-seeing inward eye
There hath arisen there
Another haunting Presence as sublime,

As great, as sternly fair;
Yea, rather fairer far
Than stream, or sky, or star,
To live while star shall burn or river roll,
Unmarred by marring Time,

The crown of Being, a heroic soul.
Beyond the weltering tides of worldly change
He saw the invisible things,
The eternal Forms of Beauty and of Right;
Wherewith well pleased his spirit wont to range,

Rapt with divine delight,
Richer than empires, royaler than kings.
V.
Lover of children, lord of fiery fight,
Saviour of empires, servant of the poor,

Not in the sordid scales of earth, unsure,
Depraved, adulterate,
He measured small and great,
But by some righteous balance wrought in heaven,
To his pure hand by Powers empyreal given;

Therewith, by men unmoved, as God he judged aright.
VI.
As on the broad sweet-watered river tost
Falls some poor grain of salt,
And melts to naught, nor leaves embittering trace;

As in the o'er-arching vault
With unrepelled assault
A cloudy climbing vapour, lightly lost,
Vanisheth utterly in the starry space;
So from our thought, when his enthroned estate

We inly contemplate,
All wrangling phantoms fade, and leave us face to face.