Overlive it — lower yet — be happy ! wherefore should

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

What is it that which I should turn to, lighting upon days

like these ? Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden

keys.

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, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's

heels.

Can I but relive in sadness ? I will turn that earlier page. Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous

Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the

strife, When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of

my life;

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, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary

dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs

of men;

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping some

thing new : That which they have done but earnest of the things

that they shall do:

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,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly

bales ;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a

ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central

blue ;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind

rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the

thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle

flags were furld In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful

realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal

law.

So I triumph’d, ere my passion sweeping thro' 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 thro' the ages one increasing purpose

runs,

And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process

of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youth

ful joys, Tho’the deep heart of existence beat for ever 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