Classic Poem

Prosaic miles of streets stretch all around
Astir with restless, hurried life, and spanned
By arches that with thund'rous trains resound,
And throbbing wires that galvanise the land;
Gin-palaces in tawdry splendour stand;
The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found;
The last burlesque is playing in the Strand —
In modern prose all poetry seems drowned.

Yet in ten thousand homes this April night
An ancient People celebrates its birth
To Freedom, with a reverential mirth,
With customs quaint and many a hoary rite,
Waiting until its tarnished glories bright,
Its God shall be the God of all the earth.