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

clime?

what to me were sun or

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 I 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 prate
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

99

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;

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 fear.
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.

THE TWO VOICES.

A STILL Small voice spake unto me, "Thou art so full of misery,

Were it not better not to be?"

Then to the still small voice I said; "Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made."

To which the voice did urge reply; "To-day I saw the dragon-fly

Come from the wells where he did lie."

"An inner impulse rent the veil

Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

"He dried his wings: like gauze they grew:
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."

I said, "When first the world began,
Young Nature thro' five cycles ran,
And in the sixth she moulded man.

"She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast."

Thereto the silent voice replied;
"Self-blinded are you by your pride:
Look up thro' night: the world is wide.

"This truth within thy mind rehearse,
That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

"Think you this mould of hopes and fears
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres ?"

It spake, moreover, in my mind:
"Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind,
Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all."

To which he answer'd scoffingly;
"Good soul! suppose I grant it thee,
Who'll weep for thy deficiency?

"Or will one beam be less intense,
When thy peculiar difference

Is cancell'd in the world of sense ?"

I would have said, "Thou canst not know," But my full heart, that work'd below, Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me: "Thou art so steep'd in misery, Surely 't were better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep:

Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, "The years with change advance:
If I make dark my countenance,

I shut my life from happier chance.

"Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet." But he: “What drug can make A wither'd palsy cease to shake ?”

I wept, "Tho' I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, thro' novel spheres of thought
Still moving after truth long sought,
Will learn new things when I am not."

"Yet," said the secret voice, "some time,
Sooner or later, will gray prime

Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

"Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heaven's starry flight,

Would sweep the tracts of day and night.