I

There is no moment in the life of man More potent to subdue the stuff that binds His manhood into one than that which finds The work the founders of his race began, And centuries enlarged, until its span Encompasses a nation, bodies, minds And institutions, scattered to the winds Out of his life, of which it held the plan. And with the sense of something sacred sold, His heritage, and branded with the crime Against the ages, from the lowest pit, Gathered for judgment meet, his eyes behold, Tier after tier upon the banks of time, The generations of his fathers sit.

RASTATT, 1st May