I think it could not have been
published long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of
anything national in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out
the "Tempest" from Shakespeare before he let Nolan have it, because he
said "the Bermudas ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day."
So Nolan was permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of
them sat on deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such
things so often now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal
of time so. Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book
and read to the others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in
the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border
chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily
through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something, and
then began, without a thought of what was coming:
"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,"--
It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first
time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,
still unconsciously or mechanically--
"This is my own, my native land!"
Then they all saw that something was to pay; but he expected to get
through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,
"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?--
If such there breathe, go, mark him well--"
By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was
any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence
of mind for that; he gagged a little, coloured crimson, and staggered
on--
"For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225