Hark! Is that the grey owl? With strange, unmelodious cry he stirs the stillness. I turn to watch him, as he swims the night air with moveless wing—dropping, like the emissary of an evil witch, on the willow branch between me and the moon. Bird of ill omen, thou hast shattered my dream! The Palace has disappeared, the lutes are silent, the fair company dispersed; the nightingale, that sang of 'love, and love's sharp woe,' is mute for another century. Only the faint plash of the river, rippling over its sand-bars; only the mountain shadows beneath the waning, gibbous moon; only the unbroken silence of the Austral woodland, brooding, majestic, as of one watching through the eternities for the birth of a nation. 'The light that never was on sea or land' fades rapidly, and with the sigh that greets the evanishing of the undersoul's fair fantasies I seek my couch.
An early réveillé comes Duty, with reason-compelling Circumstance; a deputation demanding answers to questions, of which due notice has been given. 'Enterprises of great pith and moment are imminent.' We must to horse and away, not betaking ourselves to pilgrim's staff, as is customary with us; time permits not. What bard—was it the sweet singer of a Brisbane Reverie, 'The Complaint of the Doves,' the laureate of Royalty (black), the minstrel of the desert steed, that in a lighter hour proclaimed—
For I am bound to Stanthorpe town,
And time with me is tin?
We are not journeying quite so far as the stanniferous stronghold; yet is our errand not unconnected with the metal that the Silures and Phœnicians delved for in Cornwall long before Julius Cæsar, without reference to the susceptibilities of king, kaiser, or chancellor, established his protectorate of Britain.
The stern Roman, the world's master, has vanished from among the tribes of men. His descendant, an ignoble fainéant, a stolid peasant, or a hired model, sells the right to mould the heroic form which has survived the heroic soul. The wide-ranging, sea-roving Anglo-Saxon, descendant of the fiercer races, has succeeded to his heritage of universal empire.
But can it be that the mother of nations is sinking into senile decrepitude, with selfish querulousness evading responsibility, only to lapse into deserved decay of power, and well-merited insignificance in the council halls of the world?
Oh for one hour of Wallace wight,
Or well-skilled Bruce to rule the fight!