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, Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowd- Like an old woman, and down rolls the world No graver than a schoolboys' barring out; Too comic for the solemn things they are, Too solemn for the comic touches in them, Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream As some of theirs-God bless the narrow seas! I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad." '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 gain'd the garden rails, A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman, A patron of some thirty charities, A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none; Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed More joyful than the city-roar that hails Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs Give up their parks some dozen times a year But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, So much the gathering darkness charm'd : we sat But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, Perchance upon the future man: the walls Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd, And gradually the powers of the night, That range above the region of the wind, Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up |