The 1835 Poem “Locksley
Hall” Foresees
The Second World War and
the United Nations
Alfred Tennyson
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Editorial Note:
The following verses are a
fragment
from the poem “Locksley
Hall”, by
Alfred Tennyson. They are reproduced
according to the volume “Selected Poems,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson”, Gramercy Books,
New York, Avenel, New
Jersey, copyright
1993, 256 pp, see pp. 65-66.
Tennyson wrote
the poem in 1835 and it was
first published in 1842.
The verses anticipate the
air-battles and the world
wars of the 20th century,
as well as the United Nations
or “Parliament of Men” - the
“Federation of the World”.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
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Hide me from my deep
emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!
Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt
before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the
tumult of my life;
Yearning for the large excitement that the
coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves
his father’s field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and
nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring
like a dreary dawn;
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone
before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among
the throngs of men;
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever
reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the
things that they shall do.
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye
could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the
wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies
of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down
with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and
there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in
the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the
south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging
thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the
battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of
the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a
fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in
universal law.
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In September 2016, after a careful analysis of the state of the
esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to form the Independent Lodge of Theosophists,
whose priorities include the building of a better future in the different
dimensions of life.
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