Noons
Art thou our friend , O Day-dawn 's Lover ? Full oft thine hand hath sent aslant Bright beams athwart the Wood-bear 's cover , Where the feeble folk and the nameless haunt . Thou hast seen us quail , thou hast seen us cower , Thou hast seen us crouch in the Green Abode , While for us wert thou slaying slow hour by hour , And smoothing down the war-rough road . Yea , the rocks of the Waste were thy Dawns upheaving , To let the days of the years go through ; And thy Noons the tangled brake were cleaving The slow-foot seasons ' deed to do . Then gaze adown on this gift of our giving , For the WOLF comes wending frith and ford , And the Folk fares forth from the dead to the living , For the love of the Lief by the light of the Sword . Then ceased the song , and the whole band of the Woodlanders came pouring tumultuously into the space allotted them , like the waters pouring over a river-dam , their white swords waving aloft in the morning sunlight ; and wild and strange cries rose up from amidst them , with sobbing and weeping of joy . But soon their troubled front sank back into ordered ranks , their bright blades stood upright in their hands before them , and folk looked on their company , and deemed it the very Terror of battle and Render of the ranks of war .