England and Yesterday — London - VII. Doves

DOVES.

Ah, if man’s boast and man’s advance be vain!

And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome, That monstrous island of the middle main;

If each inheritor must sink again Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?

— I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.

What folly lies in forecasts and in fears!

Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls.

“God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.

” VIII.