For I dipped into the future far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; 16c
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 rained 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 through the thun

der-storm;

165

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were 170

furled

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, lapped in universal law.

So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through 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.

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180

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 185 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the

suns.

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!

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the 190 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 scorn: Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a mouldered string?

195

I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a 200 thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, wom

an's pain

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower

brain.

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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.

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah for some

retreat

Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father, evil-starred!
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 gate-ways 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.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,

Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from 220

the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossomed 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 225

mind,

In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake man

kind.

There the passions cramped no longer shall have scope and breathing-space;

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race. 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;

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 gray 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!

Not in vain the distance beacons.

range.

Forward, forward let us

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of

change.

Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger

day:

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother Age (for mine I knew not), help me as when life begun : Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the

Sun.

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235

240

245

250

255

Oh, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.
Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall! Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening 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.

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TRIBUTE BY CHARLES DICKENS.

1. I saw Thackeray first, nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before Christmas,' at the Athenæum Club,

11863.