By A. C. S. <br />The Centuries kiss and commingle, <br />Cling, clasp, and are knit in a chain; <br />No cycle but scorns to be single, <br />No two but demur to be twain, <br />'Till the land of the lute and the love-tale <br />Be bride of the boreal breast, <br />And the dawn with the darkness shall dovetail, <br />The East with the West. <br />The desire of the grey for the dun nights <br />Is that of the dun for the grey; <br />The tales of the Thousand and One Nights <br />Touch lips with 'The Times' of to-day.— <br />Come, chasten the cheap with the classic; <br />Choose, Churton, thy chair and thy class, <br />Mix, melt in the must that is Massic <br />The beer that is Bass! <br />Omnipotent age of the Aorist! <br />Infinitely freely exact!— <br />As the fragrance of fiction is fairest <br />If frayed in the furnace of fact— <br />Though nine be the Muses in number <br />There is hope if the handbook be one,— <br />Dispelling the planets that cumber <br />The path of the sun. <br />Though crimson thy hands and thy hood be <br />With the blood of a brother betrayed, <br />O Would-be-Professor of Would-be, <br />We call thee to bless and to aid. <br />Transmuted would travel with Er, see <br />The Land of the Rolling of Logs, <br />Charmed, chained to thy side, as to Circe <br />The Ithacan hogs. <br />O bourne of the black and the godly! <br />O land where the good niggers go. <br />With the books that are borrowed of Bodley, <br />Old moons and our castaway clo'! <br />There, there, till the roses be ripened <br />Rebuke us, revile, and review, <br />Then take thee thine annual stipend <br />So long over-due.<br /><br />Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/unity-put-quarterly/
