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; 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 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, : Not only we, the latest seed of Time, Upon his town, and all the mothers brought Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!" 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." "You would not let your little finger ache For such as these?"—" But I would die," said she. Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; 46 O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-"Alas!" she said, So left alone, the passions of her mind, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all Then she rode forth. clothed on with chastity: Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity; Boring a little augur-hole in fear, Peep'd but his eyes, before they had their will, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all at once, One after one: but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd, And built herself an everlasting name. |