THE GOLDEN YEAR. WELL, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote: Old James was with me: we that day had been To which, "They call me what they will," he said: "But I was born too late the fair new forms That float about the threshold of an age, Like truths of Science waiting to be caught- Are taken by the forelock. Let it be. But if you care indeed to listen, hear These measured words, my work of yestermorn. The dark Earth follows wheeled in her ellipse: Move onward, leading up the golden year. “Ah, though the times when some new thought can bud Are but as poets' seasons when they flower, Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. "When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man "Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the Press; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of the golden year. "But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Through all the circle of the golden year? " Thus far he flowed, and ended; whereupon "Ah, folly! "Ah, folly! for it lies so far away, in mimic cadence answered James Not in our time, nor in our children's time, 'Tis like the second world to us that live, 'T were all as one to fix our hopes on Heaven As on this vision of the golden year." With that he struck his staff against the rocks And broke it, — James,—you know him, — old, but full Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet, And like an oaken stock in winter woods, Then added, all in heat: "What stuff is this? Old writers pushed the happy season back, — The more fools they, we forward: dreamers both : You most, that in an age, when every hour Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death, Live on, God love us, as if the seedsman, rapt Upon the teeming harvest, should not dip That unto him who works, and feels he works, He spoke; and, high above us, I heard them blast The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff. ULYSSES. IT little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those |