Thou shalt hear the Never, never,' whisper'd by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow get thee to thy rest again.
Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down : my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.
Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

'They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not exempt -Truly, she herself had suffer'd'-Perish in thy self-contempt !

Overlive it-lower yet-be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
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 relive 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 :

I

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 south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' 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,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' 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,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.
Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.
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 thro' 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 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 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 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.

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 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;

| And pray'd him, 'If they pay this tax, they starve.'

Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,

I hung with grooms and porters on the You would not let your little finger ache

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

For such as these?'—' But I would die,'

said she.

He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by
Paul:

Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;
'O ay, ay, ay, you talk !'-'Alas!' she
said,

Of rights and wrongs, have loved the 'But prove me what it is I would not do.'

people well,

And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she

And from a heart as rough as Esau's

hand,

He answer'd, 'Ride you naked thro' the town,

scorn,

Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back, And I repeal it;' and nodding, as in
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers
brought

He parted, with great strides among his

dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind, Their children, clamouring, 'If we pay, As winds from all the compass shift and

She sought her lord, and found him, Made war upon each other for an hour,

where he strode

About the hall, among his dogs, alone,

His beard a foot before him, and his hair

Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet,

all

A yard behind. She told him of their The hard condition; but that she would

The people therefore, as they loved her The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the well, From then till noon no foot should pace Gleam thro' the Gothic archways in the

the street,

No eye look down, she passing; but that all

field

wall. Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity:

earth,

Should keep within, door shut, and And one low churl, compact of thankless
window barr'd.
Then fled she to her inmost bower, The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little auger-hole in fear,
Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had

and there Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath She linger'd, looking like a summer moon Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,

And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee ;

Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair

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;

Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, And she, that knew not, pass'd: and all

slid

From pillar unto pillar, until she reach'd The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt

In purple blazon'd with armorial gold. Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:

The deep air listen'd round her as she rode,

Was

clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,

One after one: but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away

And all the low wind hardly breathed for And built herself an everlasting name.

Light horrors thro' her pulses: the blind O LADY FLORA, let me speak :

walls A pleasant hour has passed away Were full of chinks and holes; and over- While, dreaming on your damask cheek, The dewy sister-eyelids lay.

head

Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but As by the lattice you reclined,

she

I went thro' many wayward moods

Not less thro all bore up, till, last, she To see you dreaming-and, behind,

saw

A summer crisp with shining woods.