But 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 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.'

6

'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

BB

In such discourse we gain'd

And there we saw Sir Walter w Before a tower of crimson holly Among six boys, head under he No little lily-handed Baronet he. A great broad-shoulder'd genial A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sh A raiser of huge melons and of pi A patron of some thirty charities, A pamphleteer on guano and on gra A quarter-sessions chairman, abler n Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy Now shaking hands with him, now hir That stood the nearest--now address'd Who spoke few words and pithy, such a Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the To follow: a shout rose again, and made The long line of the approaching rookery From the elms, and shook the branches of From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and

Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs

Give up their parks some dozen times a year

To let the people breathe?

So thrice they cried,

I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away.

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

Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds,

Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

Last little Lilia, rising quietly,

Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph

From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.