As red the fire-scathed royal northland bloom, [Str. 4. 
  That left our story a name
  Dyed through with blood and flame
  Ere her life shrivelled from a fierier doom
  Than theirs her priests bade pass from earth in fire
  To slake the thirst of God their Lord’s desire: 
  As keen the blast of love-enkindled fate
  That burst the Paduan tyrant’s guarded gate: 
  As sad the softer moan
  Made one with music’s own 130
  For one whose feet made music as they fell
  On ways by loveless love made hot from hell: 
  But higher than these and all the song thereof
  The perfect heart of love,
  The heart by fraud and hate once crucified,
  That, dying, gave thanks, and in thanksgiving died.

  Above the windy walls that rule the Rhine [Ant. 4. 
  A noise of eagles’ wings
  And wintry war-time rings,
  With roar of ravage trampling corn and vine 140
  And storm of wrathful wassail dashed with song,
  And under these the watch of wreakless wrong,
  With fire of eyes anhungered; and above
  These, the light of the stricken eyes of love,
  The faint sweet eyes that follow
  The wind-outwinging swallow,
  And face athirst with young wan yearning mouth
  Turned after toward the unseen all-golden south,
  Hopeless to see the birds back ere life wane,
  Or the leaves born again; 150
  And still the might and music mastering fate
  Of life more strong than death and love than hate.

        In spectral strength biform [Ep. 4. 
        Stand the twin sons of storm
    Transfigured by transmission of one hand
        That gives the new-born time
        Their semblance more sublime
    Than once it lightened over each man’s land;
      There Freedom’s winged and wide-mouthed hound, 159
And here our high Dictator, in his son discrowned.

  What strong-limbed shapes of kindred throng round these [Str. 5. 
  Before, between, behind,
  Sons born of one man’s mind,
  Fed at his hands and fostered round his knees? 
  Fear takes the spirit in thraldom at his nod,
  And pity makes it as the spirit of God,
  As his own soul that from her throne above
  Sheds on all souls of men her showers of love,
  On all earth’s evil and pain
  Pours mercy forth as rain 170
  And comfort as the dewfall on dry land;
  And feeds with pity from a faultless hand
  All by their own fault stricken, all cast out
  By all men’s scorn or doubt,
  Or with their own hands wounded, or by fate
  Brought into bondage of men’s fear or hate.