Galsworthy, John, 1867-1933 -- Travel -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc., English
territory not half developed, and great natural beauty. I remember
sitting on a bench overlooking the Grand Canyon of Arizona; the sun was
shining into it, and a snow storm was whirling down there. All that
most marvellous work of Nature was flooded to the brim with rose and
tawny-gold, with white, and wine-dark shadows; the colossal carvings
as of huge rock-gods and sacrificial altars, and great beasts along
its sides, were made living by the very mystery of light and darkness,
on that violent day of Spring; I remember sitting there, and an old
gentleman passing close behind, leaning towards me and saying in a sly,
gentle voice: “How are you going to tell it to the folks at home?”
America has so much, that one despairs of telling to the folks at home,
so much grand beauty to be to her an inspiration and uplift towards
high and free thought and vision. Great poems of Nature she has,
wrought in the large, to make of her and keep her a noble people. In my
beloved Britain――all told, not half the size of Texas――there is a quiet
beauty of a sort which America has not. I walked not long ago from
Worthing to the little village of Steyning, in the South Downs. It was
such a day as one seldom gets in England; when the sun was dipping and
there came on the cool chalky hills the smile of late afternoon, and
across a smooth valley on the rim of the Downs one saw a tiny group
of trees, one little building, and a stack, against the clear-blue,
pale sky――it was like a glimpse of heaven, so utterly pure in line and
colour so removed, and touching. The tale of loveliness in our land is
varied and unending, but it is not in the grand manner. America has the
grand manner in her scenery and in her blood, for in America all are
the children of adventure, every single man an emigrant himself or a
descendant of one who had the pluck to emigrate. She has already had
past-masters in dignity, but she has still to reach as a nation the
grand manner in achievement. She knows her own dangers and failings;
her qualities and powers; but she cannot realise the intense concern
and interest, deep down behind our provoking stolidities, with which
we of the old country watch her, feeling that what she does reacts on
us above all nations, and will ever react more and more. Underneath
surface differences and irritations we English-speaking peoples are
fast bound together. May it not be in misery and iron! If America walks
upright, so shall we; if she goes bowed under the weight of machines,
money, and materialism, we too shall creep our ways. We run a long
race, we nations; a generation is but a day. But in a day a man may
leave the track, and never again recover it! Nations depend for their
health and safety on the behaviour of the individuals who compose them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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