Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could

see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world;

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumphed, ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry,

Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with be jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint,

Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowlydying fire.

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,

Though the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,

And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears laden breast,

а

Full of sad experience moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,

They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a mouldered string?

I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah for some retreat

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evilstarred;

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's

ward.

Or to burst all links of habit-there to wander far

away,

On from island unto island at the gateways of the

day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,

Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,

Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree

Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,

In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have scope and breathing-space;

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive, and they shall run,

Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,

Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books

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 зun 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 forever down the ringing grooves of change.

Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:

Better 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 through 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 vapor 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 J go.

GODIVA.

I waited for the train at Coventry ;

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,