Michael Villiers, Idealist :: :: University of Virginia Library

Now time was ripe, good old Sir William thought,
Michael were wed, seeing the time drew near
Should see the young man master at Villiers Keep;
So would not Michael, ere his uncle died,
Bring home a wife? But Michael shook his head;
For thoughts were working fast within his brain,
Because the man had looked around and seen
Full many a thing his uncle could not see;
And he was waiting till the hour should come
He might translate his thinking into deed;
And, till it came, he would not make one tie
He could not break, if so there came a need.

But had you asked if he had dreamed a dream,
Or seen a vision, or had heard a call
To be apart from men, and do some work
When he were free (for, while his uncle lived,
He held himself bound first of all to him,

Daughter and son in one, to love and tend),
His fellows might not share; some work that claimed
Body and soul and spirit; shutting out
The radiancy of common happiness
Which broods about a home; he had replied,
‘I know not aught of this; I only fear
It is no time to marry and increase.
I have seen visions maybe; dreamed perhaps
Some dream quick with the passion of my land;
Perchance have heard a calling from a voice
Of unfamiliar tone; but this I know,
I hear a cry from many human throats;
I look around and see this English land
Is filled with great injustice; and I say,
“Now God do so to me, and also more,
If so I strive not hard to see aright
The remedy as well as the disease,—
And better with Ignotus see aright,
Than err with Plato;—and to do aright,
When it may be I see; and never stay
From wrestling hard to win the liberty
Of men bound hand and foot by circumstance,
And mocked with name of freemen.”

O my God,
Who art not far from any one of us;

Who art as near the Englishman to-day
As to the Hebrew thirty centuries back;
Wilt thou not show me what to do, and how,
If so be I will go the way to see?’