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C J Dennis - Important People
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The success of the Scout movement throughout the whole world has been amply proven by the present triumphant gathering in Melbourne.
Great and important people, these –-
   Important far beyond our ken –-
Who mark with adult sophistries
   Their serious air of sober men,
Their fancy garb, their solemn fuss,
   With code and law, their tender age.
Soon shall they count for more than us
   Stale actors on an outworn stage.

They are, say we, mere children drawn
   By make-believe from many lands;
Yet soon, at some swift morrow’s dawn
   Earth’s destiny top these small hands
Must pass; and, should their creed prevail,
   As well it may for all earth’s good,
They shall have triumphed where we fail,
   In peace and long-sought brotherhood.

Here rests a new world’s shining hope,
   And we, a mad world’s residue,
Doomed lately in dark ways to grope,
   May yet, thro’ them, find dreams come true –-
Dreams that our blunted senses sought
   To grasp in one exalted hour,
And lost –- the good for which men fought
   Brought into everlasting flower.

Important people?  Who are we
   To greet with patronising smiles
Their creed of regained chivalry –-
   We who are cheated by crude wiles
Of greed and folly, and became
   Flotsam, forlorn and tempest-tossed? . . . . 
More precious far their childish game
   Than wisdom in our chaos lost.
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