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?

I remember one that perished: sweetly did she speak and 95

move:

Such an one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore? she never loved me truly love is love for evermore.

No;

Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! This is truth the poet 100

sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier

things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to

proof,

In the dead, unhappy night, when the rain is on the roof.

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.

105

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken 110

sleep,

To thy widowed marriage pillows, to the tears that thou wilt

weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom

years,

And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy

pain.

Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.

115

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry. 120 'Tis a purer life than thine; a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down: my latest rival brings thee rest. Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

Oh, 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.

125

Oh, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's

heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings-she herself was not

exempt

Truly, she herself had suffered."-Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it-lower yet-be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

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.
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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135

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 140
sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor 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! 145
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,

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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; And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of menMen my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something 155

new:

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

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?

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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.

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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210

Or to burst all links of habit, there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gate-ways of the day.

215

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;

230

Whistle back the parrot's call and leap the rainbows of the 235 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. Forward, forward let us range.

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

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250

255

Sun.