'Late, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts' LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER, ETC. TO MY WIFE I DEDICATE THIS DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE AND THE POEMS WHICH FOLLOW LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS | Jilted for a wealthier! wealthier? yet AFTER LATE, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts, Watch'd again the hollow ridges roar. ing into cataracts, Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call, I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall. So-your happy suit was blasted she the faultless, the divine; And you liken-boyish babble-this boy-love of yours with mine. I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past; Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last. Curse him!' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage? perhaps she was not wise; I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes. In the hall there hangs a paintingAmy's arms about my neck Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck. Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well She that holds the diamond necklace might fool a dotard's age. 10 dearer than the golden ring, She that finds a winter sunset fairer Gone the tyrant of my youth, and than a morn of spring. She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life, While she vows 'till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife. She the worldling born of worldlings father, mother-be content, Even the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent. Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground, Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound. Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride; Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died. 30 Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood, Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood. There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer, mute below the chancel stones, All his virtues-I forgive themblack in white above his bones. Close beneath the casement crimson All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled, Lies my Amy dead in childbirth, dead the mother, dead the child. alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me. mother, Gone thy tender-natured Truth for truth, and good for good! | Then, and here in Edward's time, an The good, the true, the pure, the just Take the charm For ever' from them, and they crumble into dust. Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom; Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb. Half the marvels of my morning, tri umphs over time and space, Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace! age of noblest English names, Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames. Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great; Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate. From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse: Rome of Cæsar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse? Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer; Patience! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage. Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep? Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep? Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray; After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May? After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie, Some diviner force to guide us thro' R the days I shall not see? When the schemes and all the systems, kingdoms and republics fall, Something kindlier, higher, holier all for each and each for all? 150 All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth; All the millions one at length with all the visions of my youth? All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt, or deaf, or blind; Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind? Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue for is not Earth as yet so young? Send the drain into the fountain, lest I have seen her far awaythe stream should issue pure. |
