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

Nature 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, nothing. Ah, for some retreat

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

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

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

ward.

Or to burst all links of habit-there to wander far

away,

On from island unto island at the gateways

day.

of the

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 the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd 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 mind,

In the 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

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 let us range.

Forward,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.1

Thro' 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

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

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!

6

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

1 Ringing grooves of change. Tennyson said (see Life) When I went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester 1830, I thought that the wheels ran in a groove we could not see the wheels. Then I made this line.'

Comes a vapour 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..

GODIVA

First printed in 1842. This poem, embodying the well-known Coventry tradition, should be compared with Moultrie's poem on the same subject, and with Landor's Dialogue Leofic and Godiva in the Imaginary Conversations.

I waited for the train at Coventry ;

I hung with grooms and porter's on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this :

Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past, not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well,
And loathed to see them overtax'd; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl, who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax
Upon his town, and all the mothers brought
Their children, clamouring, '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;
'O ay, ay, ay, you talk! '—' Alas!' 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 bad 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

No

street,

eye look down, she passing; but that all Should keep within, door shut, and window barr'd.

Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there Unclasp'd the wedded eagles of her belt, The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath She linger'd, looking like a summer moon Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head, And shower'd the rippled ringlets to her knee; Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid