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 evil

starr'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.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and

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, swings 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.

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 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 rain. bows 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 for ever 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.