For some blind glimpse of freedom work itself Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun ? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by year alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself? If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all, Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro, Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit 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 : '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. Ir 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. For ever and for ever when I move. 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 Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay 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 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. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. ENGLAND AND AMERICA IN 1782. O THOU, that sendest out the man Be proud of those strong sons of thine Who wrench'd their rights from thee! What wonder, if in noble heat Those men thine arms withstood, Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught, And in thy spirit with thee fought— Who sprang from English blood! But Thou rejoice with liberal joy, Lift up thy rocky face, And shatter, when the storms are black, In many a streaming torrent back, The seas that shock thy base! Whatever harmonies of law The growing world assume, Thy work is thine-The single note From that deep chord which Hampden smote Will vibrate to the doom. |