creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one in

creasing 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 youthful 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, sound

ing 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 moulder'd string?

I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

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, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine

Here at least, where nature sickens, noth

ing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd ;

I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

There In the

methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, 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;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks, Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books

ward, forward let us range.

wander far away,

ways of the day.

the ringing grooves of change.

into the younger day: Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

well to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapor from the margin, black ening 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.

Upon his town, and all the mothers

brought

Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!"

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, "You would not let your little finger ache For such as these?". "But I would die," said she.

He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul:

Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear;

she 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, Till pity won. She sent a herald forth, And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all

The hard condition; but that she would loose

The people: therefore, as they loved her well,

From then till noon no foot should pace the street,

No eye look down, she passing; but that all

Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower,

she

Not less thro' all bore up, till, last, she saw The white-flower'd elder-thicket from the field

Gleam thro' the Gothic archways in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity:

And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,

The fatal byword of all years to come,
Boring a little augur-hole in fear,
Peep'd-but his eyes, before they had
their will,

Were shrivell'd into darkness in his head, And dropt before him. So the Powers, who wait

On noble deeds, cancell'da sense misused; And she, that knew not, pass'd : and all

at once,

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon

Was clash'd and hammer'd from a hundred towers,

One after one but even then she gain'd Her bower; whence reissuing, robed and crown'd,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away And built herself an everlasting name.

THE TWO VOICES.

A STILL small voice spake unto me,
"Thou art so full of misery,
Were it not better not to be?"

Then to the still small voice I said;
"Let me not cast in endless shade

What is so wonderfully made.”

To which the voice did urge reply; "To-day I saw the dragon-fly Come from the wells where he did lie.

"An inner impulse rent the veil Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

"She gave him mind, the lordliest Proportion, and, above the rest, Dominion in the head and breast."

Thereto the silent voice replied; "Self-blinded are you by your pride: Look up thro' night: the world is wide.

"This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe

Is boundless better, boundless worse.

"Think you this mould of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres ?"

It spake, moreover, in my mind: "Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind, Yet is there plenty of the kind."

Then did my response clearer fall: "No compound of this earthly ball Is like another, all in all."

To which he answer'd scoffingly; "Good soul! suppose I grant it thee, Who 'll weep for thy deficiency? When thy peculiar difference "Or will one beam be less intense,

Is cancell'd in the world of sense?"

I would have said, "Thou canst not
know,"
But my full heart, that work'd below,
Rain'd thro' my sight its overflow.

Again the voice spake unto me:
"Thou art so steep'd in misery,
Surely 't were better not to be.

"Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, Nor any train of reason keep: Thou canst not think, but thou wilt weep."

I said, "The years with change advance :
If I make dark my countenance,
I shut my life from happier chance.

"Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet." But he: "What drug can make

A wither'd palsy cease to shake?"

I wept, "Tho' I should die, I know
That all about the thorn will blow
In tufts of rosy-tinted snow;

"And men, thro' novel spheres of thought Still moving after truth long sought, Will learn new things when I am not."

"Yet," said the secret voice, "some time, Sooner or later, will gray prime Make thy grass hoar with early rime.

"Not less swift souls that yearn for light, Rapt after heaven's starry flight, Would sweep the tracts of day and night.

"Not less the bee would range her cells,
The furzy prickle fire the dells,
The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

I said that "all the years invent;
Each month is various to present
The world with some development.

"Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Tho' watching from a ruin'd tower How grows the day of human power?"

"The highest-mounted mind," he said, "Still sees the sacred morning spread The silent summit overhead.

"Will thirty seasons render plain Those lonely lights that still remain, Just breaking over land and main ?

"Or make that morn, from his cold crown And crystal silence creeping down, Flood with full daylight glebe and town?

"Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let Thy feet, millenniums hence, be set In midst of knowledge, dream'd not yet.

"Thou hast not gain'd a real height, Nor art thou nearer to the light, Because the scale is infinite.

66

""T were better not to breathe or speak, Than cry for strength, remaining weak, And seem to find, but still to seek.

"Moreover, but to seem to find
A healthy frame, a quiet mind.”
Asks what thou lackest, thought resign'd,

I said, "When I am gone away,
'He dared not tarry,' men will say,
Doing dishonor to my clay."

"This is more vile," he made reply,
"To breathe and loathe, to live and sigh,
Than once from dread of pain to die.

"Sick art thou - a divided will Still heaping on the fear of ill The fear of men, a coward still.

"Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name may sound Will vex thee lying underground

"The memory of the wither'd leaf In endless time is scarce more brief Than of the garner'd Autumn-sheaf.

"Go, vexed Spirit, sleep in trust; The right ear, that is fill'd with dust, Hears little of the false or just."

"Hard task, to pluck resolve," I cried, "From emptiness and the waste wide Of that abyss, or scornful pride!

"Nay-rather yet that I could raise One hope that warm'd me in the days While still I yearn'd for human praise.

"When, wide in soul and bold of tongue, Among the tents I paused and sung, The distant battle flash'd and rung.

"I sung the joyful Pæan clear, And, sitting, burnish'd without fear The brand, the buckler, and the spear

"Waiting to strive a happy strife, To war with falsehood to the knife, And not to lose the good of life

"Some hidden principle to move, To put together, part and prove, And mete the bounds of hate and love