and full, and clear;
And floating about the under-sky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold;
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold!'

"That, my dear father, is the song I wish to hear you singing--that I
want to take up, I in my turn after you. I want your voice now to be
awful and jubilant, and your carol to be 'free and bold' like the carol
of that dying bird; and the sound of it to be like the rejoicing of a
mighty people on a day of festival."

The King shook his head. "My dear boy," he said, "I don't understand
poetry; I never did."

"Well," said the son, "let me interpret it then into prose. Monarchy as
an institution is dying, and it can either die in foolish decrepitude,
or it can die mightily, merging itself in democracy for a final blow
against bureaucratic government. All that is written in my book. That is
why I am now able to express myself so well: these periods are largely a
matter of quotation. The right role for monarchy to-day is, believe me,
to be above all things democratic--not by truckling to the ideas of the
people in power--the 'ruling classes' as they still call themselves--but
by daring to be human and natural, and to refuse absolutely to be
dehumanized on the score of its high dignity and calling.

"If, for instance, I came to you to-day and said I wanted to marry one
of my own nation--say even a commoner--in preference to the daughter of
some foreign princeling, let me do it! It breaks with a foolish
tradition--largely our own importation when, as foreigners, we were
seeking to keep up our prestige--it may annoy or even embarrass the
Government. Well! have they not annoyed and embarrassed you?"

The King nodded sympathetically, but in words hastened to correct
himself. "One has often to make sacrifices in defense of an
institution," he said. "That is a duty we both owe."

"Why," inquired the Prince, "should I make sacrifices to an institution
I do not really approve? Why should I pretend to love some foreign
princess if I have given my heart to one--I cannot say of my own
race--for I remember that we are an importation--but of the country of
my adoption? Do you really suppose that because it annoys the Prime
Minister and disturbs his political calculati