But in the distance there is a puff of steam. Just a puff, but it will do. Post-boys, coachmen, guards, chaises, melt like meadow rime before the sun.
You spun your webs over England, hedge to hedge. You kept England bound together by your spinning wheels. But it is gone. They have driven a wedge of iron into your heart. They have dried up the sea, and made pathways in the swimming air. They have tapped the barrels in your cellars and your throats are parched and bleeding. But still the hedges blow for the Spring, and dusty soldiers smell your roses as they tramp to Aldershot or Dorchester.
England forever! Star-pointed and shining. Flinging her hedges out and asunder to embrace the world.
THE BRONZE HORSES
ELEMENTS
Earth, Air, Water, and Fire! Earth beneath, Air encompassing, Water within its boundaries. But Fire is nothing, comes from nothing, goes nowhither. Fire leaps forth and dies, yet is everything sprung out of Fire.
The flame grows and drops away, and where it stood is vapour, and where was the vapour is swift revolution, and where was the revolution is spinning resistance, and where the resistance endured is crystallization. Fire melts, and the absence of Fire cools and freezes. So are metals fused in twisted flames and take on a form other than that they have known, and this new form shall be to them rebirth and making. For in it they will stand upon the Earth, and in it they will defy the Air, and in it they will suffer the Water.
But Fire, coming again, the substance changes and is transformed. Therefore are things known only between burning and burning. The quickly consumed more swiftly vanish, yet all must feel the heat of the flame which waits in obscurity, knowing its own time and what work it has to do.
ROME