O thou good guest! so oft as, young and warm,
To the home-wind thy hoisted colors bound,
Away, away from this too thoughtful ground
Sated with human trespass and despair,
Thee only, from the desert, from the storm,
A sick mind follows into Eden air.”
Our inherited traditions were like wine to her, our lapses drained her soul; and as it was in 1890, when that sonnet was written, so it continued to be through the years when our star sank, in 1914, to be so long in rising. In 1915, she wrote:
“I have been disappointed over our country’s official attitude: there should be no ‘neutrality’ of opinion where rights and wrongs are as plain as the nose on one’s face!”
And in February, 1917:
“‘Come, let your broadsides roar with ours!’ as Tennyson says. Only I never shall get over the unexpected and staggering vision of my own idealistic land having behaved for nearly three solid years in this selfish, provincial way, with the masterly vision of a village schoolmaster who sees as far as his village pump, and not one inch beyond it.”