As a kingdom comes clear

(Written to celebrate someone else's history) It was all here, all complete even when the terrain was shrouded in mist and the towers, with their colored pennants flying still quite unguessed. The wonder is that this - this! - should have been chosen with no more to go on, there at the start, than a sound so faint that to have caught it at all must, in itself, have been a kind of miracle. How did it happen? That first inkling? For there must have been a first: when suddenly you found yourself (wherever it was) listening, listening - as faintly through the familiar immediacy of a scene, and from across whole leagues of intervening space - Yes, a wonder it now can seem! That even before knowing what trumpets were for a summons was thus recognized. And a heart as yet so unarmed for what formidably lay in wait not only should have straightway sprung to respond but later - when there, out there ahead all brassy adversaries, in glittering ranks arose (as of old) to mock you down never once have faltered! Never drawn back!