"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, Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. "When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with frëer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread, and man be liker man Thro' all the season of the golden year.
"Shall eagles not be eagles ? wrens be wrens? If all the world were falcons, what of that? The wonder of the eagle were the less, But he not less the eagle. Happy days Roll onward, leading up the golden year. "Fly happy happy sails and bear the Press; Fly happy with the mission of the Cross; Knit land to land, and blowing havenward With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll, Enrich the markets of the golden year.
"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,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Thro' all the circle of the golden year?"
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,
'Tis like the second world to us that live; 'Twere 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:
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 dip 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.
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, governments, 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- 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
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
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,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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