To muse and brood and live again in memory,
With those old faces of our infancy

Heap'd over with a mound of grass,

Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!

VI

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives

And their warm tears; but all hath suffer'd change;
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Our sons inherit us, our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.
Or else the island princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,
And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.
Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.

The Gods are hard to reconcile;
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labor unto aged breath,

Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars

And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.

VII

But, propped on beds of amaranth and moly,

How sweet-while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly

With half-dropped eyelid still,

Beneath a heaven dark and holy,

To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill-

To hear the dewy echoes calling

From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine-
To watch the emerald-color'd water falling
Thro' many a woven acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,

Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine.

VIII

The Lotos blooms below the barren peak,
The Lotos blows by every winding creek;

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone;
Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown.

We have had enough of action, and of motion we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.

For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd

Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world;

Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,

Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.

But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer-some, 'tis whisper'd-
down in hell

Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell,
Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel.
Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and

oar;

O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

639

YOU ASK ME, WHY

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.

It is the land that freemen till,

That sober-suited Freedom chose,

The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown,

Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent;

Where faction seldom gathers head,
But, by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute
Opinions, and induce a time

When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute,

Tho' power should make from land to land
The name of Britain trebly great-
Tho' every channel of the State
Should fill and choke with golden sand-

Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth,
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see before I die

The palms and temples of the South.

640

LOVE THOU THY LAND

LOVE thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied past, and used
Within the present, but transfused
Thro' future time by power of thought;

True love turn'd round on fixed poles,
Love, that endures not sordid ends,
For English natures, freemen, friends,
Thy brothers, and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time,

Nor feed with crude imaginings

The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might

To weakness, neither hide the ray

From those, not blind, who wait for day,
Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky

Bear seed of men and growth of minds.

Watch what main-currents draw the years:
Cut Prejudice against the grain.
But gentle words are always gain;
Regard the weakness of thy peers.

Nor toil for title, place, or touch

Of pension, neither count on praise-
It grows to guerdon after-days.
Nor deal in watch-words overmuch;

Not clinging to some ancient saw,

Not master'd by some modern term, Not swift nor slow to change, but firm; And in its season bring the law,

That from Discussion's lip may fall
With Life that, working strongly, binds-
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all.

For Nature also, cold and warm,
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro' many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form.

Meet is it changes should control
Our being, lest we rust in ease.
We all are changed by still degrees,
All but the basis of the soul.

So let the change which comes be free
To ingroove itself with that which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.

A saying hard to shape in act;

For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.

Even now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom-
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.

A slow-develop'd strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States-

The warders of the growing hour,

But vague in vapor, hard to mark; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power.