They watered it for years and years,
But found its tides of no avail;
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we have utilized its waves!—
when you read a stanza like that, you did not realize all at once that it was the Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse which Pirbright was “utilizing” to celebrate the glories of the tide-trap. And there was a certain forcefulness about lines like:
But still my heart with rapture fills,
And dances with the cotton-mills:
but you felt the thing was going too far when you came across a poem called “Sky-writing,” which opened:
My heart leaps up when I behold
An advert in the sky.