Tidings of some deliverance great and strange,
Some life more noble, some sublimer hope,
Some regal race enthroned beyond the grave,
Had reached them from afar. The best believed,
Great hearts for whom nor earthly love sufficed
Nor earthly fame. The meaner scoffed: yet all
Desired the man. Delay had edged their thirst.

Then Patrick, standing up among them, spake,
And God was with him. Not as when loose tongue
Babbles vain rumour, or the Sophist spins
Thought's air-hung cobwebs gay with Fancy's dews,
Spake he, but words of might, as when a man
Bears witness to the things which he has seen,
And tells of that he knows: and as the harp
Attested is by rapture of the ear,
And sunlight by consenting of the eye
That, seeing, knows it sees, and neither craves
Inferior demonstration, so his words
Self-proved, went forth and conquered: for man's mind,
Created in His image who is Truth,
Challenged by truth, with recognising voice
Cries out "Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,"
And cleaves thereto. In all that listening host
One vast, dilating heart yearned to its God.
Then burst the bond of years. No haunting doubt
They knew. God dropped on them the robe of Truth
Sun-like: down fell the many-coloured weed
Of error; and, reclothed ere yet unclothed,
They walked a new-born earth. The blinded Past