Towards democracy

The Dream goes by 387

Tue DREAM GOES BY

HE dream goes by, touches men’s hearts, and floats and fades againFar on the hilis away from this nightmare of modern cheap-jack life: The finished free Society.

Finished and done with so much that clogs to-day the weary spirit, weary body ;

Finished and done with all the old cumbersome apparatus of Law and Authority, with the endless meanness of ‘business’ and money-making, with the silly paraphernalia of distinction and respectability, with the terrible struggle of each against all, and the trampling of the weak underfoot by the strong;

Done with the endless joyless labors for the bread that perisheth, for clothing which keeps not the heart warm, for possessions which only weigh their owners to the ground ;

With envies, greeds, jealousies—loads and burdens of life too great to be borne—Sisyphus toils that bring no nearer to the goal.

The grown man hand in hand with his little girl, walking the woodland path,

With brown uncovered bodies, both of them, so glad, content, unconscious ;

And all the wealth and beauty of the world is theirs ;

The Sun shining on their limbs ; and in their minds the long results of human culture.