Classic Poem

Are ye indeed gone forth, and is your place
emptied of all that might whereby we held
our fields and home and faith derived of eld,
and whither now is turn'd your alter'd face?

The hearth-flame shakes and dies that once we bore
hither from altars of our happier sires;
now the young foe sows wide his ruin-fires:
the land is changed to know us never more.

The sword is vain, perish'd in age-long rust;
cover each head and wait by the dead flame
the ending of our tale upon this earth:

whom gather'd virtue of our darkling trust
hung stars, now war against their cherish'd name,
that this night's pyre release their phoenix-birth.