Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life Little remains but every hour is saved To follow knowledge, like a sinking star, This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Of common duties, decent not to fail Meet adoration to my household gods When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all but something ere the end, : Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are ; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. LOCKSLEY HALL. COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn. 'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time; When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed: When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. |