FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133  
134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   >>   >|  
a poem to the Victorians, sir," he said coldly. The professor picked it up curiously while Amory backed rapidly through the door. Here is what he had written: "Songs in the time of order You left for us to sing, Proofs with excluded middles, Answers to life in rhyme, Keys of the prison warder And ancient bells to ring, Time was the end of riddles, We were the end of time... Here were domestic oceans And a sky that we might reach, Guns and a guarded border, Gantlets--but not to fling, Thousands of old emotions And a platitude for each, Songs in the time of order-- And tongues, that we might sing." ***** THE END OF MANY THINGS Early April slipped by in a haze--a haze of long evenings on the club veranda with the graphophone playing "Poor Butterfly" inside... for "Poor Butterfly" had been the song of that last year. The war seemed scarcely to touch them and it might have been one of the senior springs of the past, except for the drilling every other afternoon, yet Amory realized poignantly that this was the last spring under the old regime. "This is the great protest against the superman," said Amory. "I suppose so," Alec agreed. "He's absolutely irreconcilable with any Utopia. As long as he occurs, there's trouble and all the latent evil that makes a crowd list and sway when he talks." "And of course all that he is is a gifted man without a moral sense." "That's all. I think the worst thing to contemplate is this--it's all happened before, how soon will it happen again? Fifty years after Waterloo Napoleon was as much a hero to English school children as Wellington. How do we know our grandchildren won't idolize Von Hindenburg the same way?" "What brings it about?" "Time, damn it, and the historian. If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence." "God! Haven't we raked the universe over the coals for four years?" Then the night came that was to be the last. Tom and Amory, bound in the morning for different training-camps, paced the shadowy walks as usual and seemed still to see around them the faces of the men they knew. "The grass is full of ghosts to-night." "The whole campus is alive with them." They paused by Little and watched the moon rise, to make silver of the slate roof of Dodd and
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133  
134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Butterfly
 

Wellington

 

Hindenburg

 
children
 

idolize

 

grandchildren

 

contemplate

 

gifted

 

happened

 

Napoleon


Waterloo

 
English
 

brings

 
happen
 
school
 

ghosts

 

shadowy

 

campus

 

silver

 

paused


Little

 

watched

 

clothed

 

monotony

 

magnificence

 
historian
 

morning

 

training

 

universe

 

oceans


guarded

 

domestic

 
ancient
 

warder

 

riddles

 

border

 

Gantlets

 

tongues

 

platitude

 

emotions


Thousands
 
prison
 

curiously

 

backed

 

rapidly

 
picked
 

professor

 
Victorians
 
coldly
 

middles