 | Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas |  |
‘What Providence is this that maketh sport with Chance
blindly staking against things of no ordinance?
Must the innocent dear birds that singing in the shaw
with motherly instinct wove their nest of twisted straw
see in some icy hail-gust their loved mansion drown'd
and all their callow nurslings batter'd on the ground?
Even so a many-generation'd city of men
the storied temple of their endeavour and amorous ken
is toss'd back into rubbish by a shudder of the earth's crust:
Nor even the eternal stars have any sanction'd trust
that, like ships in dark night ill-fatedly on their course,
they shall not meet and crash together, and all their force
be churn'd back to the vapory magma whence they grew
age-long to plod henceforth their frustrate path anew.
blindly staking against things of no ordinance?
Must the innocent dear birds that singing in the shaw
with motherly instinct wove their nest of twisted straw
see in some icy hail-gust their loved mansion drown'd
and all their callow nurslings batter'd on the ground?
Even so a many-generation'd city of men
the storied temple of their endeavour and amorous ken
is toss'd back into rubbish by a shudder of the earth's crust:
Nor even the eternal stars have any sanction'd trust
that, like ships in dark night ill-fatedly on their course,
they shall not meet and crash together, and all their force
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age-long to plod henceforth their frustrate path anew.
| Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas | |