Towards democracy, стр. 98

84 Towards Democracy

I dream the dream: I dream the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.

Where you bend ankle-deep in mud all day in the rice plantations for a few half-pence; and the sun sails onslow, slow—over the steamy land;

Where you walk following the old employ, shepherding sheep in the sweet crisp air of the high lands; |

‘Where you stand pale and worn-eyed in the gloomy North i amid the hot smell of machinery and the wicked scream of wheels ; where you stand adjusting the threads, making the same answering movement of the hand for the millionth time ;

Where you lie wedged in under a coal seam, working © by the light of a tallow dip stuck in clay ; or grind scythes all day, bending over, or race your wheel with the racing steel ; -

Where you sit high up on the fragrant mountains of Ceylon, with a great flood of moonlight at your feet, leaning your soul out from the verandah to the slow lifting and floating of palm-fronds in the exquisite breeze; and memories come trooping back upon you like the clouds of small yellow butterflies that along your coasts—between the sand and the sea—beat annually up against the wind;

Where you recline by your camp-fire in the African wild, watching the moonlight dances of the natives—the fantastic” leaps of the dancer, the rhythmical hand-clapping of the spectators ;

Where you drop down the river in the sun, past the dreaded mud-banks and wildernesses of mangroves ;

I dream the dream.