Thro' madness, hated by the wise, to law, System and empire? Sin itself be found The cloudy porch oft opening on the Sun? And only he, this wonder, dead, become Mere highway dust? or year by year alone Sit brooding in the ruins of a life, Nightmare of youth, the spectre of himself? If this were thus, if this, indeed, were all, Better the narrow brain, the stony heart, The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, The long mechanic pacings to and fro, Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years, The Sun will run his orbit, and the Moon Her circle. Wait, and Love himself will bring The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit Of wisdom. Wait: my faith is large in Time, And that which shapes it to some perfect end. Will some one say, Then why not ill for good? Why took ye not your Pastime? To that man My work shall answer, since I knew the right And did it; for a man is not as God, But then most Godlike being most a man. - So let me think 'tis well for thee and me Ill-fated that I am, what lot is mine Whose foresight preaches peace, my heart so slow To feel it! For how hard it seem'd to me, When eyes, love-languid thro' half tears would dwell One earnest, earnest moment upon mine, Then not to dare to see! when thy low voice, Faltering, would break its syllables, to keep My own full-tuned, - hold passion in a leash, And not leap forth and fall about thy neck, And on thy bosom (deep desired relief!) Rain out the heavy mist of tears, that weigh'd Upon my brain, my senses and my soul! For Love himself took part against himself To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love -came Like Death betwixt thy dear embrace and mine, And crying, Who is this? behold thy bride,' She push'd me from thee. If the sense is hard To alien ears, I did not speak to these No, not to thee, but to thyself in me: Hard is my doom and thine: thou knowest it all. Could Love part thus? was it not well to speak, To have spoken once? It could not but be well. The slow sweet hours that bring us all things good, The slow sad hours that bring us all things ill, And all good things from evil, brought the night In which we sat together and alone, And to the want, that hollow'd all the heart, Gave utterance by the yearning of an eye, That burn'd upon its object thro' such WELL, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote: It was last summer on a tour in Wales: Old James was with me: we that day had been 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 isleWell-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Of common duties, decent not to fail |