Thereto you answered, "Forward! in God's name; I own no lesser law, no narrower claim. A freeman's Reason well might think it scorn To toil for those who may be never born, But for some Cause not wholly out of ken, Some all-directing Will that works with men, Some Universal under which may fall The minor premiss of our effort small; In Whose unending purpose, though we cease, We find our impulse and our only peace." So passed our greeting, till we turned once more, I to my desk and you to rule Indore. To meet again--ah! when? Yet once we met, And to one dawn our faces still are set. EXETER, _September_ 10, 1904. * In the school quadrangle at Clifton, the site from which, upon occasion, the grand stand used to overlook the Close, is now occupied by the Memorial to those Cliftonians who fell in the South African War. {220} _An Essay on Criticism_ 'Tis hard to say if greater waste of time Is seen in writing or in reading rhyme; But, of the two, less dangerous it appears To tire our own than poison others' ears. Time was, the owner of a peevish tongue, The pebble of his wrath unheeding flung, Saw the faint ripples touch the shore and cease, And in the duckpond all again was peace. But since that Science on our eyes hath laid The wondrous clay from her own spittle made, We see the widening ripples pass beyond, The pond becomes the world, the world a pond, All ether trembles when the pebble falls, And a light word may ring in starry halls. When first on earth the swift iambic ran Men here and there were found but nowhere Man. From whencesoe'er their origin they drew, Each on its separate soil the species grew, And by selection, natural or not, Evolved a fond belief in one small spot. The Greek himself, with all his wisdom, took For the wide world his bright Aegean nook, {221}