CONCLUSION.
Here closed our compound story which at first
Had only meant to banter little maids
With mock-heroics and with parody:
But slipt in some strange way, crost with burlesque,
From mock to earnest, even into tones
Of tragic, and with less and less of jest
To such a serious end that Lilia fixt
A showery glance upon her Aunt and said
'You—tell us what we are;' who there began
A treatise, growing with it, and might have flow'd
In axiom worthier to be grav'n on rock,
Than all that lasts of old-world hieroglyph,
Or lichen-fretted Rune and arrowhead;
But that there rose a shout; the gates were closed
At sundown, and the crowd were swarming now,
To take their leave, about the garden rails.
And I and some went out, and mingled with them.
And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood,
Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks,
Among six boys, head under head, and look'd
No little lily-handed Baronet he,
A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman,
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep,
A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
A patron of some thirty charities,
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none;
Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn;
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those
That stood the nearest—now address'd to speech—
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed
Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year
To follow: a shout arose again, and made
The long line of the approaching rookery swerve
From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer
From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang
Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout
More joyful than the city-roar that hails
Premier or king! Why don't these acred Sirs
Throw up their parks some dozen times a year
And 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
Saying little, 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 without sound,
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.