<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">The Peer's Progress <br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/>[Verses on reading that Lord Aberdeen was about to be <br xmlns:exist="http://exist.sourceforge.net/NS/exist" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"/>made Marquess of Aberdeen and Tara.]</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line">TARA, the place of Kings, the hill of Fate—</p><p class="line">Tara, the throne of Song, the hallowed</p><p class="line">shrine—</p><p class="line">Tagged as a tassel to your marquessate,</p><p class="line">Made an appurtenance of your house and</p><p class="line">line!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Who cares though you were marquess ten</p><p class="line">times o'er?</p><p class="line">Bemarquess'd or beduked—who cares a</p><p class="line">straw?</p><p class="line">But linked with Erin's immemorial lore,</p><p class="line">Her memories sacrosanct, her mount of awe!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Nay, why so modest, why so humble—why</p><p class="line">Pause, in your too meek flight, on Tara Hill?</p><p class="line">"Marquess of Aberdeen and Sinai"—</p><p class="line">Consider!—were not this ev'n better still?</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">God made me English—English through and</p><p class="line">through—</p><p class="line">But, bound to Ireland by one bond supreme,</p><p class="line">I know her soul—something unknown to you—</p><p class="line">Her vision and her passion and her dream.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">I know, as all know who have breathed her air.</p><p class="line">How transient, how unrooted in her heart—</p><p class="line">A mere ephemeral thing of passage there—</p><p class="line">Were you, that in her glories claim a part.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And this last insult before gazing men—</p><p class="line">This ignominy the bitterest yet by far—</p><p class="line">She will remember and forgive not, when</p><p class="line">You in Time's volume an erasure are.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">You, soon enough, will be by her forgot;</p><p class="line">Lodged in some suburb of her thoughts were</p><p class="line">you;</p><p class="line">But this will as a proverb live, of what</p><p class="line">Dull, sightless, soulless statesmanship can do.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">This profanation, blind and coarse and crude,</p><p class="line">Of things the holiest held, from sea to sea,</p><p class="line">This is immortal as Ineptitude,</p><p class="line">This is eternal as Stupidity.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">And ev'n to this, from all the ages past.</p><p class="line">Through all the long self-torturings, Ireland</p><p class="line">came;</p><p class="line">Left to her disillusions at the last,</p><p class="line">And Tara fall'n—a pendant to your name.<a class="footnote" href="#watsonretrop93n1" name="watsonretrop93n1-link" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">*</a></p></div></body></html> · Great War