Live-yet live-That, setting the how much before the Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all Life needs for life is possible to willLive happy; tend thy flowers; be tended by My blessing! Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts Too sadly for their peace, remand it thou For calmer hours to Memory's darkest hold, If not to be forgotten-not at once- O might it come like one that looks content, With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth, And point thee forward to a distant light, Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee freër, till thou wake refresh'd Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearl Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, Beyond the fair green field and eastern sea. THE GOLDEN YEAR. WELL, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote: It was last summer on a tour in Wales: Old James was with me: we that day had been Up Snowdon; and I wish'd for Leonard there, And found him in Llanberis: then we crost Between the lakes, and clamber'd half way up The counter side; and that same song of his He told me; for I banter'd him, and swore They said he lived shut up within himself, A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days, how, Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, 'Give, Cram us with all,' but count not me the herd! To which They call me what they will,' he said: 'But I was born too late the fair new forms, That float about the threshold of an age, Like truths of Science waiting to be caught Catch me who can, and make the catcher crown'd Are taken by the forelock. Let it be. 'We sleep and wake and sleep, but all The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun; The dark Earth follows wheel'd in her ellipse; And human things returning on themselves Move onward, leading up the golden year. Ah, tho' the times, when some new thought can bud, Are but as poets' seasons when they flower, Yet oceans daily gaining on the land, Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. 'When wealth no more shall rest in Be each man's rule, and universal Peace sea, Thro' all the circle of the golden year?' Thus far he flow'd, and ended; whereupon 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. ULYSSES. IT little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Ah, folly!' in mimic cadence answer'd Unequal laws unto a savage race, 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 And like an oaken stock in winter woods, '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 hoard, and sleep, and feed, and Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds A bringer of new things; and vile it To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. were For some three suns to store and hoard It may be that the gulfs will wash us To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle-- We are not now that strength which in Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs the deep : Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are ; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. TITHONUS. THE woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, The ever-silent spaces of the East, Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man So glorious in his beauty and thy choice, Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem'd To his great heart none other than a God! I ask'd thee, 'Give me immortality.' Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile, Like wealthy men who care not how they give. But thy strong Hours indignant work'd In days far-off, on that dark earth, be their wills, And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me, And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love, Thy beauty, make amends, tho' even now, Close over us, the silver star, thy guide, Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way A soft air fans the cloud apart; there LOCKSLEY HALL. COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn : 'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall; Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove ; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young, And I said, 'My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light, And she turn'd-her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs— Saying, 'I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong; Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. |