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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Alfred Tennyson (1809–92)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 2038
AUTHOR: Alfred Tennyson (1809–92)
QUOTATION: For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drums throbb’d, no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
ATTRIBUTION: ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,Locksley Hall,” verses 60–65, The Poetical Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, p. 111 (1897).
SUBJECTS: World