The Fire

Near the house flowed, or paused, the black Canal,     Edged by the timber piles so black and tall.     From the rotten fence I watched the horses pull     Along the footpath, slow and beautiful,     Moving with strength and ease, in their great size     And untired movement wonderful to my eyes;     Their dull brass clanking as each shaggy foot     Stamped the soft cinder track as fine as soot.     The driver lurched old and forbidding by,     Not seeing the child that feared to meet his eye.     I watched the rope dip, tighten, and the water flash     In falling, and then heard the hiss and splash;     I watched the barge drag slowly on and on,     Not dreaming how lovely a ship could ride the water upon,     Not dreaming how lovely flowing water was,     Sung to by trees and fingered by long grass,     Or running from the bosom of a hill     Down, where it flows so deep that it seems still.     But it was by that rotten fence one night     I saw the timber piles break into light,     Suddenly leaping into a heavenly flame     That played with the wind and one with the wind became.     Pile to pile gave its fire, till they were like     Bright angels with flashing swords before they strike,     Terrible and lovely. But men those angels fought,     Small and humble and patient all night wrought,     And all day wrought and night and day again,     And night and day, pouring their hissing rain,     Until the angels tired and one by one died.     Then their black spectres haunted the waterside,     Charred ruins, broken-limbed, no more erect,     Or heaped black dust, with cold white ashes flecked.     But I had seen the angel-quelling men,     With blackened and bruised face, the horses thin,     The glittering harness, the leaky, bubbling mains,     The broad smoke, and the steam from the leaping rains:--     O I had seen what I should not forget,     Men that defeated ruinous angels and shall still defeat.