So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry, Left me with a 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, Gla res 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. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, 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, evil-starred; 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 sun 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 ring ing 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 light nings, 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 hail, or fire or snow; For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON. SONG. "A WEARY lot is thine, fair maid, A weary lot is thine! To pull the thorn thy brow to braid, A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien, A doublet of the Lincoln green— My love! No more of me you knew. |