The Rulers of Mankind

1895

What though the Sword, incarnadined and crowned,
Yoke to its car the servile feet of Fate;
What though the sophist Senate's pompous prate
Engross the hour and shake the world with sound.
Their carnal conquests can at best but found
Some tinsel towering transitory state
On force or fraud, whose summits, soon or late,
Fresh fraud or force will level with the ground.
It is the silent, eremitic mind,
Immured in meditation long and lone,
Lord of all knowledge, while itself unknown,
And in its cloister ranging unconfined,
That builds Thought's time long universal throne,
And with an unseen scepter rules Mankind.

— Alfred Austin in National Review.