We nameless, that have labour’d in the dumb

patience of more than thousand years, whose task

what harvest claim’d our faith stay’d not to ask,

must all we perish ere the sabbath come?

The dawn was chill about our going forth

each morn, and black the earth in that damp hour

with presage of a ne’er-vouchsafed flower,

and bitter in our eyes the sleety north.

Harsh mother, thou hast drunk our soul unborn;

take now this outworn flesh and our despair:

within thy lap at least we shall not care

if here no grove of pillar’d arches warn

some wanderer above our moulder’d bones

how once we dream’d beside these uncouth stones.