Ages of temperate freedom, a vision of order, he saw!--
--Vision of opulent years, a murmur of welfare and peace:
Orchard golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase;
Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine;
Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;--
Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse
Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance,
Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes,
Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies.
Bloodless conquests of commerce, that nation with nation unite!
Hand clasp'd frankly in hand, not steel-clad buffets in fight:
On the deck strange accents and shouting; rough furcowl'd men of the
north,
Genoa's brown-neck'd sons, and whom swarthy Smyrna sends forth:
Freights of the south; drugs potent o'er death from the basilisk won,
Odorous Phoenix-nest, and spice of a sunnier sun:--
Butts of Malvasian nectar, Messene's vintage of old,
Cyprian webs, damask of Arabia mazy with gold:
Sendal and Samite and Tarsien, and sardstones ruddy as wine,
Graved by Athenian diamond with forms of beauty divine.
To the quay from the gabled alleys, the huddled ravines of the town,
Twilights of jutting lattice and beam, the Guild-merchants come down,
Cheapening the gifts of the south, the sea-borne alien bales,
For the snow-bright fleeces of Leom'ster, the wealth of Devonian vales;
While above them, the cavernous gates, on which knight-robbers have gazed
Hopeless, in peace look down, their harrows of iron upraised;
And Dustyfoot enters at will with his gay Autolycus load,
And the maidens are flocking as doves when they fling the light grain on
the road.
Low on the riverain mead, where the dull clay-cottages cling