Or seem to lift a burden from thy heart THE GOLDEN YEAR. WELL, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote: Old James was with me: we that day had been To which " They call me what they will," he said: But if you care indeed to listen, hear These measured words, my work of yestermorn. 66 We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move; 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 seas, that daily gain upon the shore, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freër light shall slowly melt And light shall spread, and man be liker man Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens? Fly, happy happy sails and bear the Press; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, Thus far he flow'd, and ended; whereupon "Ah, folly!" in mimic cadence answer'd James "Ah, folly! for it lies so far away, Not in our time, nor in our children's time, "T is like the second world to us that live; 'T were 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 feet, And like an oaken stock in winter woods, O'erflourish'd with the hoary clematis : Then added, all in heat: "What stuff is this! Old writers push'd the happy season back, The more fools they, we forward: dreamers both : Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death, He spoke; and, high above, I heard them blast ULYSSES. Ir little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life This is my son, mine own Telemachus, In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail : There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, 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 honor and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will LOCKSLEY HALL. COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn: Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn. '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, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time; When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed: When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; 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 her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me, Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee." On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light, As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. And she turn'd her bosom shaken with a sudden sorm of sighs All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes — |