Parliament of Man, Federation of the World

“Parliament of Man, Federation of the World” names the peaceful international order imagined at the close of a passage from Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall.” In the poem’s movement from visions of technological marvels and aerial conflict to a world governed by common sense and universal law, the phrase gives Harry’s saved lines their culminating hope: that nations might one day replace battle with collective rule.

The Vision of a World Parliament

The phrase appears as part of the poem’s picture of war ending: “Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle flags were furl’dIn the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.” The image does not merely call for an end to fighting; it pairs the cessation of war with a new form of political association, in which humanity is gathered into a parliament and a federation.

From Conflict to Common Law

The surrounding lines sharpen that contrast. The poem first imagines “nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue,” then turns toward a future in which “the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe” and “the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.” The world parliament belongs to this larger sequence: technological progress makes conflict newly vast, while shared judgment and law offer the imagined means of bringing it to an end.

Harry’s Saved Lines

Harry copied and kept the lines from “Locksley Hall,” a poem that described wonders to come, including airships and aerial warfare, before arriving at its vision of universal peace. The act of saving the passage places the phrase within his youthful attention to the future. In the book’s account, it is not presented as a developed political program; its significance rests in the contrast the poem preserves between the destructive possibilities of modern invention and the hope of a world ordered by common sense and law.