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:

Retter 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 nail, or

fire or snow;

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and

I go.

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

Their children, clamouring, "If we pay, we starve!" She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone,

His beard a foot before him, and his hair

A yard behind. She told him of their tears,

And pray'd him, "If they pay this tax, they starve." Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed,

"You would not let your little finger ache

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, "But prove me what it is I would not do."

And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,