Words Worth Noting - November 17, 2021

“‘Look there, a garden!’ said my college friend,/ The Tory member’s elder son, ‘and there!/ God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off,/ And keeps our Britain, whole within herself,/ A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled--/ Some sense of duty, something of a faith,/ Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,/ Some patient force to change them when we will,/ Some civic manhood firm against the crowd--/ But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat,/ The gravest citizen seems to lose his head,/ The king is scared, the soldier will not fight,/ The little boys begin to shoot and stab,/ A kingdom topples over with a shriek/ Like an old woman, and down rolls the world/ In mock heroics stranger than our own;/ Revolts, republics, revolutions, most/ No graver than a schoolboys’ barring out;/ Too comic for the serious things they are,/ Too solemn for the comic touches in them,/ Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream/ As some of theirs--God bless the narrow seas!/ I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.’”

Alfred Lord Tennyson “The Princess: Conclusion” in Alfred Tennyson: The Major Works