No garden appears, no path, no child beside,
Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate;
Only an avenue, dark, nameless without end.'
So, it seems, a hundred years have found us out. We come no longer
trailing clouds of glory. We are that which we are, less and more than
our strong ancestors; less, in that our heritage does not descend from
on high, more, in that we know ourselves for less. Yet our chosen spirit
is not wholly secure in his courage. He longs not merely to know in what
undifferentiated oneness his roots are fixed, but to discover it
beautiful. Not even yet is it sufficient to have a premonition of the
truth; the truth must wear a familiar colour.
'This heart, some fraction of me, happily
Floats through the window even now to a tree
Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,
Not like a peewit that returns to wail
For something it has lost, but like a dove
That slants unswerving to its home and love.
There I find my rest, and through the dark air
Flies what yet lives in me.
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