Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns,Amid the rustle of his planted hills,Life overflows without ambitious pains;And rains down life until the basin spills,And mounts more dizzy high the more it rainsAs though to choose whatever shape it willsAnd never stoop to a mechanical,Or servile shape, at others’ beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sungHad he not found it certain beyond dreamsThat out of life’s own self-delight had sprungThe abounding glittering jet; though now it seemsAs if some marvellous empty sea-shell flungOut of the obscure dark of the rich streams,And not a fountain, were the symbol whichShadows the inherited glory of the rich.

Some violent bitter man, some powerful manCalled architect and artist in, that they,Bitter and violent men, might rear in stoneThe sweetness that all longed for night and day,The gentleness none there had ever known;But when the master’s buried mice can play,And maybe the great-grandson of that house,For all its bronze and marble, ’s but a mouse.

Oh, what if gardens where the peacock straysWith delicate feet upon old terraces,Or else all Juno from an urn displaysBefore the indifferent garden deities;Oh, what if levelled lawns and gravelled waysWhere slippered Contemplation finds his easeAnd Childhood a delight for every sense,But take our greatness with our violence!

What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,And buildings that a haughtier age designed,The pacing to and fro on polished floorsAmid great chambers and long galleries, linedWith famous portraits of our ancestors;What if those things the greatest of mankind,Consider most to magnify, or to bless,But take our greatness with our bitterness!