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| COMRADES, leave me here a little, while as yet ’t is early morn,— | |
| Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn. | |
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| ’T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call, | |
| Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall: | |
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| Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, | 5 |
| And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. | |
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| Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, | |
| Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west. | |
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| Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade, | |
| Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid. | 10 |
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| Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime | |
| With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time; | |
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| When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed; | |
| When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed; | |
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| When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,— | 15 |
| Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. | |
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| In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast; | |
| In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; | |
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| In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; | |
| In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. | 20 |
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| Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young, | |
| And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung. | |
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| And I said, “My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me; | |
| Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.” | |
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| On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light, | 25 |
| As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night. | |
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| And she turned,—her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs; | |
| All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes,— | |
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| Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;” | |
| Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long.” | 30 |
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| Love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands; | |
| Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. | |
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| Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might; | |
| Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight. | |
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| Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, | 35 |
| And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the spring. | |
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| Many an evening by the water did we watch the stately ships, | |
| And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips. | |
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| O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more! | |
| O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore! | 40 |
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| Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,— | |
| Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue! | |
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| Is it well to wish thee happy?—having known me; to decline | |
| On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine! | |
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| Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day, | 45 |
| What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay. | |
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| As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown, | |
| And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down. | |
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| He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, | |
| Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. | 50 |
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| 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. | |
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| It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought,— | |
| Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought. | |
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| He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand,— | 55 |
| Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand. | |
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| Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace, | |
| Rolled in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace. | |
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| Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! | |
| Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth! | 60 |
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| Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule! | |
| Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool! | |
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| Well—’t is well that I should bluster!—Hadst thou less unworthy proved, | |
| Would to God—for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved. | |
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| Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit? | 65 |
| I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root. | |
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| Never! though my mortal summers to such length of years should come | |
| As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home. | |
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| Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind? | |
| Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind? | 70 |
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| I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move; | |
| Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love. | |
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| Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? | |
| No,—she never loved me truly; love is love forevermore. | |
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| Comfort? comfort scorned of devils; this is truth the poet sings, | 75 |
| That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. | |
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| Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, | |
| In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof. | |
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| Like a dog, he hunts in dreams; and thou art staring at the wall, | |
| Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall. | 80 |
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| Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep, | |
| To thy widowed marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep. | |
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| Thou shalt hear the “Never, never,” whispered by the phantom years, | |
| And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears; | |
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| And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain. | 85 |
| Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again. | |
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| Nay, but nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry; | |
| ’T is a purer life than thine, a lip to drain thy trouble dry. | |
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| Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest,— | |
| Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother’s breast. | 90 |
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| 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. | |
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| O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, | |
| With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter’s heart. | |
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| “They were dangerous guides, the feelings—she herself was not exempt— | 95 |
| Truly, she herself had suffered”—Perish in thy self-contempt! | |
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| Overlive it—lower yet—be happy! wherefore should I care? | |
| I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair. | |
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| What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these? | |
| Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys. | 100 |
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| Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow. | |
| I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do? | |
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| I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman’s ground, | |
| When the ranks are rolled in vapor, and the winds are laid with sound. | |
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| But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels, | 105 |
| And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other’s heels. | |
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| Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. | |
| Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous mother-age! | |
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| 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; | 110 |
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| Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield, | |
| Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father’s field, | |
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| And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, | |
| Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn; | |
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| And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, | 115 |
| Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men; | |
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| Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: | |
| That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do: | |
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| 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; | 120 |
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| Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, | |
| Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; | |
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| Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew | |
| From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue; | |
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| Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, | 125 |
| With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm; | |
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| Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled | |
| In the parliament of man, the federation of the world. | |
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| There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, | |
| And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. | 130 |
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| 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; | |
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| Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint. | |
| Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point: | |
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| Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, | 135 |
| Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire. | |
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| Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, | |
| And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. | |
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| 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? | 140 |
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| Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers; and I linger on the shore | |
| And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. | |
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| Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, | |
| Full of sad experience moving toward the stillness of his rest. | |
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| Hark! my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle horn,— | 145 |
| They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn; | |
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| 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. | |
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| Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman’s pleasure, woman’s pain— | |
| Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain; | 150 |
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| Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine, | |
| Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine— | |
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| Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah for some retreat | |
| Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat! | |
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| Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father, evil-starred; | 155 |
| I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle’s ward. | |
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| Or to burst all links of habit,—there to wander far away, | |
| On from island unto island at the gateways of the day,— | |
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| Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, | |
| Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise. | 160 |
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| Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,— | |
| Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag,— | |
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| Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree,— | |
| Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. | |
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| There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind— | 165 |
| In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. | |
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| There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have scope and breathing-space; | |
| I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. | |
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| 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, | 170 |
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| Whistle back the parrot’s call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks, | |
| Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books— | |
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| Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild, | |
| But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child. | |
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| I, to herd with narrow foreheads vacant of our glorious gains, | 175 |
| Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains! | |
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| 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,— | |
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| 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! | 180 |
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| Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range; | |
| Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change. | |
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| Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day: | |
| Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. | |
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| Mother-age, (for mine I knew not,) help me as when life begun,— | 185 |
| Rift the hills and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun,— | |
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| O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set; | |
| Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet. | |
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| Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! | |
| Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall. | 190 |
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| Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt, | |
| Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt. | |
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| Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow; | |
| For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go. | |
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