THREATS come which no submission may assuage, No sacrifice avert, no power dispute; The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute, And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage, The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage; The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit; And the green lizard and the gilded newt Lead unmolested lives, and die of age. The owl of evening and the woodland fox For their abode the shrines of Waltham choose: Proud Glastonbury can no more refuse To stoop her head before these desperate shocks -- She whose high pomp displaced, as story tells, Arimathean Joseph's wattled cells. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WELCOME by THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS COLUMBUS AND THE MAYFLOWER by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES GARDEN DAYS: 3. THE FLOWERS by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON FRANCE; THE 18TH YEAR OF THESE STATES by WALT WHITMAN |