Nor ever lightning char thy grain,

But, rolling as in sleep,
Low thunders bring the mellow rain,
That makes thee broad and deep!

And hear me swear a solemn oath,
That only by thy side
Will I to Olive plight my troth,

And gain her for my bride.

And when my marriage-morh may fall,
She, dryad-like, shall wear
Alternate leaf and acorn-ball
In wreath about her hair.

And I will work in prose and rhyme,

And praise thee more in both
Than bard has honored beech or lime,
Or that Thessalian growth,

In which the swarthy ringdove sat,
And mystic sentence spoke;
And more than England honors that,
Thy famous brother-oak,

Wherein the younger Charles abode
Till all the paths were dim,
And far below the Roundhead rode,
And hummed a surly hymn.

It was last summer on a tour in Wales:
Old James was with me: we that day had been
Up Snowdon; and I wished for Leonard there,
And found him in Llanberis: then we crossed
Between the lakes, and clambered half way up
The counter-side; and that same song of his
He told me; for I bantered him, and swore
They said he lived shut up within himself,
A tongue-tied poet in the feverous days,
That, setting the how much before the how,
Cry, like the daughters of the horseleech, "Give,
Cram us with all," but count not me the herd!
To which, "They call me what they will," he

said:

317

But smit with freer light shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man
Through 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 heavenward 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,
Through all the circle of the golden year?"

Thus far he flowed, and ended; whereupon, "Ah, folly!" in mimic cadence answered 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:
'T were 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'erflourished with the hoary clematis:
Then added, all in heat:

"What stuff is this! Old writers pushed 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.

ULYSSES.

Ir little profits than an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched 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 enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed 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 honored of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

[fades

[life

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on
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 labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through 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 toiled, 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 honor 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.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
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.

THE EAGLE.

HE clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls.
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

LOCKSLEY HALL.

COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,

Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, [racts. And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cata

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, [west.

Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, [silver braid. Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a

Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime

With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; [that it closed: When I clung to all the present for the promise

When I dipped into the future far as human eye could see;

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

In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; [another crest;

In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself

In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burn. ished dove;

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turned-her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs- [hazel eyesAll the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

evermore.

:

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his

happier things.

hand in thine.

voice will cry.

'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest.

Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

Oh, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.

Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

fore him then,

Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ;

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 dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,

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

part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not exempt

Truly, she herself had suffered "-Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it lower yet-be happy! wherefore should I care?

I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?

Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow.

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 southwind 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,

universal law.

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

Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the 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 slowly-dying 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.

far away,

On from island unto island at the gateways of

the day.

when life begun:

Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun

happy skies,

Breaths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats a European flag,

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

Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited treeSummer 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;

VOL. III.-21

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 thunder bolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;

For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

GODIVA.

I waited for the train at Coventry;

I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires: and there I shaped,
The city's ancient legend into this:

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel