The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the poet's dream!
Think that you would never have read:
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in world not realized;
High instincts before which our moral nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised!
That you would never have read:
Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago.
I say a third time that I have to make somebody understand this thing. Let us try it again now, just once again. Let us suppose that there had not been any little independence or any pension. Who can think what it would have meant to us? Who can think what it would mean never to have read
Ring out, wild bells,
or
When the war-drum throbs no longer,
or