Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender embrace. Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! voice will cry, 'Tis a purer life than thine: a lip to drain thy trouble dry. Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival living truth! brings thee rest. Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow. I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do? I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honour feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels. Can I but re-live in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous mother-age! Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life; Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn; And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ; Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do: For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales: Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the southwind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm; Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, 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 through 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 evilstarr'd; I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward. Or to burst all links of habit-there to wander far away, On from island unto island at the gateways of the day. And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in uni- Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and versal law. So I triumph'd, ere my passion sweeping through 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, 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, droops the trailer from the crag; Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly- There methinks would be enjoyment more than dying fire. ness of his rest. 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 Full of sad experience, moving toward the still- 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 Aijalon! Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range; Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. Through the shadow of the world 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 light nings, 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 vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunder-bolt. 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, She sought her lord, and found him, whom he strode Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim earl's gift; but ever at a breath Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity: 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 auger-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, RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free The tide of time flow'd back with me, In sooth it was a goodly time, Of good Haroun Alraschid. The boat-head down a broad canal A goodly place, a goodly time, A motion from the river won My shallop through the star-strown calm, I enter'd, from the clearer light, Still onward; and the clear canal Above through many a bowery turn From fluted vase, and brazen urn Of good Haroun Alraschid. A sudden splendour from behind Of dark and bright. A lovely time, Thence through the garden I was drawn- And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round Graven with emblems of the time, The fourscore windows all alight Of night new-risen, that marvellous time, Of good Haroun Alraschid. Then stole I up, and trancedly Six columns, three on either side, With inwrought flowers, a cloth of gold. Sole star of all that place and time, MARIANA. WITH blackest moss the flower-plots That held the peach to the garden-wall. The broken sheds look'd sad and strange, Unlifted was the clinking latch, Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said "My life is dreary, Her tears fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said "The night is dreary, She said "I am aweary, aweary, Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow: The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low She only said, "The day is dreary, About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blacken'd waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, The cluster'd marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarled bark, For leagues no other tree did dark The level waste, the rounding gray. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!" And ever when the moon was low, She saw the gusty shadow sway. And wild winds bound within their cell, Upon her bed, across her brow. She only said, "The night is dreary, All day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak'd, Old faces glimmer'd through the doors, She only said, "My life is dreary, The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The poplar made, did all confound |