CONCLUSION. So closed our tale, of which I give you all The words are mostly mine: for when we ceased So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent: With which we bantered little Lilia first: For something in the ballads which they sang, Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque, Or all, they said, as earnest as the close? Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. Betwixt the mockers and the realists: And I, betwixt them both, to please them both, I moved as in a strange diagonal, And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part In our dispute: the sequel of the tale Had touched her; and she sat, she plucked the grass, She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, "You tell us what we are;" who might have told, For she was crammed with theories out of books, But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, To take their leave, about the garden rails. So I and some went out to these: we climbed Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas; A red sail, or a white; and far beyond, Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. "Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member's elder son, "and there! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, Like an old woman, and down rolls the world Too solemn for the comic touches in them, "Have patience," I replied, "ourselves are full Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams Are but the needful preludes of the truth: For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. This fine old world of ours is but a child Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides." In such discourse we gained the garden rails, A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman, Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn; Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those The long line of the approaching rookery swerve More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, Perchance upon the future man: the walls Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped, And gradually the powers of the night, That range above the region of the wind, Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up |