 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
IV. THE RETRIBUTION.
Statesmen, beware! The Spiritual Power displacedThe Moral Power descends. Where then are ye?
The eyeless Anarch of the years to be
Draws near your feast; will meet you soon full-faced;
With cap blood-red his low, base brows are graced:
His name we know—‘The Crowned Democracy:’
Wild appetite and reckless pride is he;
He scorns all laws on rights prescriptive based.
He comes: what stands? God's Word that never errs
Replies, ‘The Church: of death she shall not taste:’
If stands the Church, were it not better, Sirs,
That girt by Nations just and sage she stood
Than like one fortress 'mid a boundless waste,
One sad, sole watch-tower by a shipless flood?
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |