Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CHAPEL OF TELL by AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE

First Line: ON THIS GREEN PLATFORM WITH ITS CHAPEL SMALL
Last Line: ON THAT DOTH BUILD, AND NOT ON GOD AND ON THE RIGHT?
Subject(s): LUCERNE (LAKE), SWITZERLAND;
ON this green platform with its chapel small
Embowered, the centre of the mountain land,
Take, holy Freedom, take for aye thy stand;
And hither from all regions ever call
Thy sons to thy perpetual festival,
Or bid them drink, a sacramental band,
From Grutli's founts that rose at thy command,
There where the three deliverers vowed the fall
Of Power unjust. Night heard those whispered tones:
Have they not found large echoes in the world?
Have they not been like God's own thunder hurled
In ruin down on all opprobrious thrones?
All sway that, deifying lawless might,
On that doth build, and not on God and on the right?



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