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 He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand! Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace, Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace. Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep. Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whisper'd by the phantom years, And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears; And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow: get thee to thy rest again. Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender 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. 90 O, 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. O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart. 1 See Notes on Dream of Fair Women, Il. 73-6 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-blossom'd 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 cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. Iron jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run, Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun; 170 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 grey 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!1 180 Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range, Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change. 1 Joshua, x: 12, 13. Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I leap on board: no helmsman steers: A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the holy Grail: When on my goodly charger borne The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, 40 50 And, ringing, springs from brand and mail; A maiden knight to me is given I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odours haunt my dreams; The clouds are broken in the sky, A rolling organ-harmony Swells up, and shakes and falls. By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 80 60 70 BREAK, BREAK, BREAK Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, O Sea! O well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead WAGES 12 16 Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, endless sea Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she: Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Vir tue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. THE HIGHER PANTHEISM The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? 8 |