THE GOLDEN YEAR

"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.

183

"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,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year?"

Thus far he flow'd, and ended; whereupon

"Ah, folly!" in mimic cadence answer'd James

"Ah, folly! for it lies so far away,

Not in our time, nor in our children's time,

'Tis like the second world to us that live;

'Twere 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,

O'erflourish'd with the hoary clematis :

Then added, all in heat:

"What stuff is this!

Old writers push'd 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 plunge
His hand into the bag: but well I know

That unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors."

He spoke; and, high above, I heard them

blast

The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap

And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff.

T little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren

crags,

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

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

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were