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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, droops the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavyfruited 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 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, forward let

us range.

Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of

change.

Thro' the shadow of the world we sweep into the

day:

younger

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.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the rooftree fall.

Comes a vapour 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
The city's ancient legend into this:-

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,

And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she

Did more, and underwent, and overcame,

The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax

Upon his town, and all the mothers brought

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