CONCLUSION So closed our tale, of which I give you all The random scheme as wildly as it rose: The words are mostly mine: for when we ceased There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, "I wish she had not yielded!" then to me, "What, if you drest it up poetically?” So prayed the men, the women: I gave assent: With which we bantered little Lilia first: 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, So I and some went out to these: we climbed 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 ruledSome 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 crowdBut yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, The little boys begin to shoot and stab, A kingdom topples over with a shriek Like an old woman, and down rolls the world In mock heroics stranger than our own; Revolts, republics, revolutions, most No graver than a school-boys' 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 gained the garden rails, Among six boys, head under head, and looked A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman, The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 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, Last little Lilia, rising quietly, Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph From those rich silks, and home well pleased we went. IN MEMORIAM. STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo! thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made. Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine. Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, oh Lord, art more than they. |