Chapter XXIV: Part III: Editor’s Appendix

“Dear Countrymen, whate’er is left to us
Of ancient heritage--
Of manners, speech, of humours, polity,
The limited horizon of our stage--
Of love, hope, fear,
All this I fain would fix upon the page:
That so the coming age,
Lost in the Empire’s mass,
Yet haply longing for their fathers, here
May see, as in a glass,
What they held dear--
May say, “’Twas thus and thus
They lived;” and as the time-flood onward rolls,
Secure an anchor for their Celtic souls.”

(Preface to _The Doctor and other Poems_, by the Rev. T. E. Brown).