104

Wherein the younger Charles abode

Till all the paths were dim, And far below the Roundhead rode, And humm'd a surly hymn.

LOVE AND DUTY.

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:

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 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

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

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of

men

And manners, climates, councils, govern

ments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose
margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.
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

Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something

more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard

myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human
thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the

isle