Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
'There's that point of view to consider,' I said. 'I'm fond of
Arcadia and Arcadians, and there's loss entailed if you send
Arcadians on the way of Athens.' Edgar sighed. 'I know what you
mean,' said he; 'and I feel it as you do. But Arcadia's got
Lacedaemon at her throat, a southern state not much troubled with
scruples, neither very philosophic nor very literary. The way has
been opened by him we wot of to Oxford, to the Athens of the
north. It was opened, as men thought, for the benefit of young
Lacedaemonians. The man that was hand-in-glove with Africanders,
with our Lacedaemonians of the south, did that. He imperiled
Lacedaemonian stability by opening the way to northern stars and
their influences to Shelley, Burke, and Mill, and to all manner
of people dangerous to the back-veld views of Lacedaemon. He
opened the way to Tolstoy's rediscovery of the Christian Law,
amongst other northern treasures, didn't he? And I, with the
Arcadian taint in my veins, saw the way open and went northwards.
Now it has come to pass that I remember my own people as Moses
did, and use the wisdom of Oxford as he used the wisdom of Egypt,
to help one's own people towards a promised land. They want
leaders, don't they? Is there not a cause? Is it healthy for
Lacedaemon to go on as she does in Arcadia, setting aside
Arcadia's own happiness?' 'I'll be back again next year,' Edgar
said, 'to compare notes and report progress, should all fall
well. If I forget thee, O my Darien-peak, let my right hand
forget her cunning!' We knelt long at the grave with the feet of
its sleeper laid true north; then we said 'Good-bye' to it.
'Bless him,' Edgar said to me as we turned away.' He opened a
wider way than he knew perchance; God prosper the Great North
Road, the Road to Oxford rather than to Cairo!'