ODE
ON THE CORONATION OF KING EDWARD VII.
BY GEORGE W. GROTE
I.
The summer night is past, th' inviolate vault,
Gem-flashing, waits Britannia's waking world
Wherein the sweet solemnity of prayer,
Ere yet the glamour of the dewdrop gleams,
Upsprings on the ethereal wings of morn.
The circling Phœbus binds about his brow
A pale corona in the orient arch,
Presentient of another glorious reign,
Unfolds the veil of England's wakeful night
And flames aloft a new historic day.
The burnished hills and lamp-lit mountain tops
Reflect the gladness of his ruddy face,
And, shafting wide from out his laughing eyes,
His morning messengers of living light
Sparkle along the glittering, dancing sea;
They merrily wake the waving forests of June,
Unshadow the lake, the meadow and the moor,
Regale, with solar fire, the thirsty flowers,
Lend lambent lustre to the purpling bloom
And, in the voices where the wild thyme grows,
Blend all the music of the heavenly spheres;
While joy leaps forth from each cathedral bell.
II.
And not with Phœbus, or the dancing sea
Alone, shall gladness be, and not alone
To all the lucent orbs of waning night,
The glowing hill-tops or the waking flowers,
Or to the matins in the leafy lute,
Or the soft sighing in the forest glade,
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