I + 

Ancestral Houses + 

Surely among a rich man’s flowering lawns, + 

Amid the rustle of his planted hills, + 

Life overflows without ambitious pains; + 

And rains down life until the basin spills, + 

And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains + 

As though to choose whatever shape it wills + 

And never stoop to a mechanical, + 

Or servile shape, at others’ beck and call. + 

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung + 

Had he not found it certain beyond dreams + 

That out of life’s own self-delight had sprung + 

The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems + 

As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung + 

Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams, + 

And not a fountain, were the symbol which + 

Shadows the inherited glory of the rich. + 

Some violent bitter man, some powerful man + 

Called architect and artist in, that they, + 

Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone + 

The sweetness that all longed for night and day, + 

The gentleness none there had ever known; + 

But when the master’s buried mice can play, + 

And maybe the great-grandson of that house, + 

For all its bronze and marble, ’s but a mouse. + 

Oh, what if gardens where the peacock strays + 

With delicate feet upon old terraces, + 

Or else all Juno from an urn displays + 

Before the indifferent garden deities; + 

Oh, what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways + 

Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease + 

And Childhood a delight for every sense, + 

But take our greatness with our violence! + 

What if the glory of escutcheoned doors, + 

And buildings that a haughtier age designed, + 

The pacing to and fro on polished floors + 

Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined + 

With famous portraits of our ancestors; + 

What if those things the greatest of mankind, + 

Consider most to magnify, or to bless, + 

But take our greatness with our bitterness! + 