The history of the past is a mere puppet-show. A little man comes out and blows a little trumpet, and goes in again. You look for something new, and lo! another little man comes out, and blows another little trumpet, and goes in again. And it is all over.
O hark,O hear! how thin and clear And thinner, clearer, farther going! O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying: Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our teeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurour and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man!
Earth is dry to the centre,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro',
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew.
Milk-livered man,
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honor from thy suffering; [that not know'st
Fools do those villains pity who are punished
Ere they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,
With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,
Whilst thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries
'Alack, why does he so?']
Since the passing of Victoria the Great there had been an accumulating uneasiness in the national life. It was as if some compact and dignified paper-weight had been lifted from people's ideas, and as if at once they had begun to blow about anyhow.
I confess my belief in the common man.... The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.... The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn.
But as the unthought-on accident is guilty To what we wildly do, so we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies Of every wind that blows.
Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?