Thomas Hardy — I Met A Man

        I met a man when night was nigh,         Who said, with shining face and eye          Like Moses' after Sinai:-          "I have seen the Moulder of Monarchies,              Realms, peoples, plains and hills,          Sitting upon the sunlit seas! -          And, as He sat, soliloquies Fell from Him like an antiphonic breeze              That pricks the waves to thrills.         "Meseemed that of the maimed and dead              Mown down upon the globe, -          Their plenteous blooms of promise shed          Ere fruiting-time—His words were said, Sitting against the western web of red              Wrapt in His crimson robe.         "And I could catch them now and then:              —'Why let these gambling clans         Of human Cockers, pit liege men         From mart and city, dale and glen, In death-mains, but to swell and swell again              Their swollen All-Empery plans,         "'When a mere nod (if my malign             Compeer but passive keep)          Would mend that old mistake of mine          I made with Saul, and ever consign All Lords of War whose sanctuaries enshrine              Liberticide, to sleep?          "'With violence the lands are spread             Even as in Israel's day,          And it repenteth me I bred          Chartered armipotents lust-led To feuds . . . Yea, grieves my heart, as then I said,              To see their evil way!'          —"The utterance grew, and flapped like flame,             And further speech I feared;          But no Celestial tongued acclaim,          And no huzzas from earthlings came, And the heavens mutely masked as 'twere in shame              Till daylight disappeared." Thus ended he as night rode high - The man of shining face and eye, Like Moses' after Sinai. 1916.