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So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry, Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint: Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying

fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of

the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,

Tho' the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,

And the individual withers, and the world is more and

more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,

Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his

rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle

horn,

They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their

scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd

string?

I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a

thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower

brain :

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with

mine,

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some

retreat

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd;
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's

ward.

Or to burst all links of habit - there to wander far

away,

On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy

skies,

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited

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Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,

In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-space;

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky

race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd they shall dive, and they shall

run,

Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the

brooks,

Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,

But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious

gains,

Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower

pains!

Mated with a squalid savage — what to me were sun or

clime?

I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time—

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us

range.

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun :

Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set. Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree

fall.

Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and

holt,

Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or

snow;

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

GODIVA.

I waited for the train at Coventry :

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there 1 shaped
The city's ancient legend into this : -

:

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prats
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry for when he laid a tax

Upon his town, and all the mothers brought

Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"
She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode
About the hall, among his dogs, alone.

His beard a foot before him, and his hair

A yard behind. She told him of their tears,

And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve."
Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,

"You would not let your little finger ache

For such as these?"—" But I would die," said she.
He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul:

Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;

46

O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-"Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what it is I would not do.”
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,
He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding, as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,

Till pity won.

She sent a herald forth,

And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She linger'd, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazon'd with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth. clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen'd round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for tear.
The little wide-mouth'd heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot
Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field
Gleam thro' the Gothic archways in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity;
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal byword of all years to come,

Boring a little augur-hole in fear,

Peep'd but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head,

And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait
On noble deeds, cancell'd a sense misused;

And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,

One after one: but even then she gain'd

Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,

And built herself an everlasting name.

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