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, cramped no longer, shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, 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, for ward let us range. Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change. Through 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 through 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 Not only we, the latest seed of Time, Upon his town, and all the mothers brought His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, For such as these?"" But I would die," said she. Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity. Peeped-but his eyes, before they had their will, And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once, noon Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers, One after one: but even then she gained Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crowned, 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 "He dried his wings: like gauze they grew: I said, "When first the world began, "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 through night : the world is wide. "This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. |