O desolate eves along the way, how oft,

despite your bitterness, was I warm at heart!

not with the glow of remember’d hearths, but warm

with the solitary unquenchable fire that burns

a flameless heat deep in his heart who has come

where the formless winds plunge and exult for aye

among the naked spaces of the world,

far past the circle of the ruddy hearths

and all their memories. Desperate eves,

when the wind-bitten hills turn’d violet

along their rims, and the earth huddled her heat

within her niggard bosom, and the dead stones

lay battle-strewn before the iron wind

that, blowing from the chill west, made all its way

a loneliness to yield its triumph room;

yet in that wind a clamour of trumpets rang,

old trumpets, resolute, stark, undauntable,

singing to battle against the eternal foe,

the wronger of this world, and all his powers

in some last fight, foredoom’d disastrous,

upon the final ridges of the world:

a war-worn note, stern fire in the stricken eve,

and fire thro’ all my ancient heart, that sprang

towards that last hope of a glory won in defeat,

whence, knowing not sure if such high grace befall

at the end, yet I draw courage to front the way.