Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships, O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more! Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me—to decline Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown, He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, 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 hand in thine. It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought: Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought. He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand— Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! Well-'tis well that I should bluster!-Hadst thou less unworthy provedWould to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved. Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit? Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come I remember one that perish'd: sweetly did she speak and move : Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? |_ No—she never loved me truly love is love for evermore. Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings, Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry. Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest. O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty 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 suffer'd'-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 gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow. I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do? I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground, When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound. But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels, Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife, Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new : 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, Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry, Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint: Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher, Jyet Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn, Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string? Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's painNature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain : Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine, Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd ;— Or to burst all links of habit-there to wander far away, Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree- There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space; Iron jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks, Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild, I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, Mated with a squalid savage-what to me were sun or clime? 2 I that rather held it better men should perish one by one, Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun : Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; GODIVA. I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the To watch the three tall spires; and there The city's ancient legend into this : Not only we, the latest seed of Time, New men, that in the flying of a wheel Cry down the past, not only we, that prate Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well, And loathed to see them overtax'd; but Did more, and underwent, and overcame, Their children, clamouring, 'If we pay, She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone, His beard a foot before him, and his hair A yard behind. She told him of their tears, And pray'd him, 'If they pay this tax, they starve.' Whereat he stared, replying, half-amazed, He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; said, 'But prove me what it is I would not do.' And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, 'Ride you naked thro' the town, And I repeal it ;' and nodding, as in scorn, He parted, with great strides among his dogs. So left alone, the passions of her mind, As winds from all the compass shift and blow, Made war upon each other for an hour, all |