Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
This I knew was false, and to be forced glibly to chatter the words
before the class shamed and angered me. Had not a maiden aunt of mine,
after many trips to the library of the New England Genealogical
Society, traced back our line to William the Conqueror? Was there
another boy or girl in the school who had descended from William the
Conqueror? No, sir! Several of them had kind hearts, and doubtless
simple faith--whatever that was--but side of my Norman blood this
counted for nothing. It is a vastly superior thing to have Norman
blood, and as for coronets--well, it may be that the new age will wipe
them literally out in a surge of Democracy--some of us hope so--but to
the romantic heart of childhood they are a symbol not of caste and
oppression but of dignity and beauty and the heroic. Certainly they
are not to be eliminated by throwing at the child's head such adult
platitudes in rhyme as these, and telling him it is poetry. Alas! he
believes you, and that is why he hates the very word poetry all the
rest of his days.
My memory-gem book lies before me as I write, saved I know not how out
of the wreck of boyhood. I have searched it in vain for a single
quotation of lyric song, a single scrap of verse that paints the world
in rosy colors and lets moral platitudes go hang, a single strain of
"Celtic magic." Instead, I learn that as a boy I was taught that--
We are living, we are dwelling
In a grand and awful time.