Читать книгу Some Impressions of My Elders - St. John G. Ervine - Страница 8

From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight

Through the woodland's purple plumage to the diamond night.

Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass

Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass.

And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and, wondering,

Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king.

This verse is obviously a poetical account of the experience he underwent "on some remote plain or steppe," and the final couplet of it gives the explanation of his belief in democracy. If he had no faith in the god in man, if he were not certain that "the restless ploughman ... deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king," he would probably offer his allegiance to autocracy and believe in government by a caste; but since he has seen visions and is convinced that there is a god in man, he cannot be other than a democrat. All his political strivings have been directed towards making this "a society where people will be at harmony in their economic life," as he writes in "The National Being," and "will readily listen to different opinions from their own, will not turn sour faces on those who do not think as they do, but will, by reason and sympathy, comprehend each other, and come at last, through sympathy and affection, to a balancing of their diversities, as in that multitudinous diversity which is the universe, powers and dominions and elements are balanced, and are guided harmoniously by the Shepherd of the Ages." Whether such a world, balanced in that way, can be rightly described as a democracy is not a matter on which I offer any opinion here, though it seems to me to be a very long way from what the common man considers a democracy to be.