The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | ||
397
X.
THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.—2.
PRINCIPLE A POWER; OR, LOGIC IN HISTORY, FEBRUARY 21, 1865.
Lo! as an eagle battling through a cloudThat from his neck all night the vapour flings,
And ploughs the dark, till downward from his wings
Sunrise, long waited, smites some shipwrecked crowd
Beneath a blind sea-cavern bent and bowed;—
Thus through the storm of Men, the night of Things,
That Principle to which the issue clings
Makes fateful way, and spurns at last its shroud.
There were that saw it with a sceptic ken:
There were that saw it not through hate or pride:
But, conquering and to conquer, on it came,
No tool of man but making tools of men,
Till Nations shook beneath its advent wide,
And they that loosed the Portent rued the same.
The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | ||