- LATE, my grandson! half the morning have I paced these sandy tracts,
- Watch'd again the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts,
- Wander'd back to living boyhood while I heard the curlews call,
- I myself so close on death, and death itself in Locksley Hall.
- So--your happy suit was blasted--she the faultless, the divine;
- And you liken--boyish babble--this boy-love of yours with mine.
- I myself have often babbled doubtless of a foolish past;
- Babble, babble; our old England may go down in babble at last.
- 'Curse him!' curse your fellow-victim? call him dotard in your rage?
- Eyes that lured a doting boyhood well might fool a dotard's age.
- Jilted for a wealthier! wealthier? yet perhaps she was not wise;
- I remember how you kiss'd the miniature with those sweet eyes.
- In the hall there hangs a painting--Amy's arms about my neck--
- Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on the ribs of wreck.
- In my life there was a picture, she that clasp'd my neck had flown;
- I was left within the shadow sitting on the wreck alone.
- Yours has been a slighter ailment, will you sicken for her sake?
- You, not you! your modern amourist is of easier, earthlier make.
- Amy loved me, Amy fail'd me, Amy was a timid child;
- But your Judith--but your worldling--she had never driven me wild.
- She that holds the diamond necklace dearer than the golden ring,
- She that finds a winter sunset fairer than a morn of Spring.
- She that in her heart is brooding on his briefer lease of life,
- While she vows ' till death shall part us,' she the would-be-widow wife.
- She the worldling born of worldlings--father, mother--be content,
- Ev'n the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent.
- Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now into the ground,
- Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his feet upon the hound.
- Cross'd! for once he sail'd the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride;
- Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the cause in which he died.
- Yet how often I and Amy in the mouldering aisle have stood,
- Gazing for one pensive moment on that founder of our blood.
- There again I stood to-day, and where of old we knelt in prayer,
- Close beneath the casement crimson with the shield of Locksley--there,
- All in white Italian marble, looking still as if she smiled,
- Lies my Amy dead in child-birth, dead the mother, dead the child.
- Dead--and sixty years ago, and dead her aged husband now,
- I this old white-headed dreamer stoopt and kiss'd her marble brow.
- Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies, curses, passionate tears,
- Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes of the planet's dawning years.
- Fires that shook me once, but now to silent ashes fall'n away.
- Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day.
- Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute below the chancel stones,
- All his virtues--I forgive them--black in white above his bones.
- Gone the comrades of my bivouac, some in fight against the foe,
- Some thro' age and slow diseases, gone as all on earth will go.
- Gone with whom for forty years my life in golden sequence ran,
- She with all the charm of woman, she with all the breadth of man,
- Strong in will and rich in wisdom, Edith, loyal, lowly, sweet,
- Feminine to her inmost heart, and feminine to her tender feet,
- Very woman of very woman, nurse of ailing body and mind,
- She that link'd again the broken chain that bound me to my kind.
- Here to-day was Amy with me, while I wander'd down the coast,
- Near us Edith's holy shadow, smiling at the slighter ghost.
- Gone our sailor son thy father, Leonard early lost at sea;
- Thou alone, my boy, of Amy's kin and mine art left to me.
- Gone thy tender-natured mother, wearying to be left alone,
- Pining for the stronger heart that once had beat beside her own.
- Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
- Good, for Good is Good, he follow'd, yet he look'd beyond the grave,
- Wiser there than you, that crowning barren Death as lord of all,
- Deem this over-tragic drama's closing curtain is the pall!
- Beautiful was death in him who saw the death but kept the deck,
- Saving women and their babes, and sinking with the sinking wreck,
- Gone for ever! Ever? no--for since our dying race began,
- Ever, ever, and for ever was the leading light of man.
- Those that in barbarian burials kill'd the slave, and slew the wife,
- Felt within themselves the sacred passion of the second life.
- Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night;
- Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return, a white.
- Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just;
- Take the charm 'For ever' from them, and they crumble into dust.
- Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
- Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.
- Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
- Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage into commonest commonplace!
- 'Forward' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one.
- Let us hush this cry of 'Forward' till ten thousand years have gone.
- Far among the vanish'd races, old Assyrian kings would flay
- Captives whom they caught in battle--iron-hearted victors they.
- Ages after, while in Asia, he that led the wild Moguls,
- Timur built his ghastly tower of eighty thousand human skulls,
- Then, and here in Edward's time, an age of noblest English names,
- Christian conquerors took and flung the conquer'd Christian into flames.
- Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great;
- Christian love among the Churches look'd the twin of heathen hate.
- From the golden alms of Blessing man had coin'd himself a curse:
- Rome of Caesar, Rome of Peter, which was crueller? which was worse?
- France had shown a light to all men, preach'd a Gospel, all men's good;
- Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.
- Hope was ever on her mountain, watching till the day begun
- Crown'd with sunlight--over darkness--from the still unrisen sun.
- Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan?
- 'Kill your enemy, for you hate him,' still, 'your enemy' was a man.
- Have we sunk below them? peasants maim the helpless horse, and drive
- Innocent cattle under thatch, and burn the kindlier brutes alive.
- Brutes, the brutes are not your wrongers--burnt at midnight, found at morn,
- Twisted hard in mortal agony with their offspring, born-unborn,
- Clinging to the silent Mother! Are we devils? are we men?
- Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again,
- He that in his Catholic wholeness used to call the very flowers
- Sisters, brothers--and the beasts--whose pains are hardly less than ours!
- Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end!
- Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.
- Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
- Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.
- Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
- When was age so cramm'd with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?
- Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
- Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal-born.'
- Equal-born? O yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
- Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat.
- Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom
- Larger than the Lion,--Demos end in working its own doom.
- Russia bursts our Indian barrier, shall we fight her? shall we yield?
- Pause, before you sound the trumpet, hear the voices from the field.
- Those three hundred millions under one Imperial sceptre now,
- Shall we hold them? shall we loose them? take the suffrage of the plow?
- Nay, but these would feel and follow Truth if only you and you,
- Rivals of realm-ruining party, when you speak were wholly true.
- Plowmen, Shepherds, have I found, and more than once, and still could find,
- Sons of God, and kings of men in utter nobleness of mind,
- Truthful, trustful, looking upward to the practised hustings-liar;
- So the Higher wields the Lower, while the Lower is the Higher.
- Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-born by right divine;
- Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.
- Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! once again the sickening game;
- Freedom, free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name.
- Step by step we gain'd a freedom known to Europe, known to all;
- Step by step we rose to greatness,--thro' the tonguesters we may fall.
- You that woo the Voices--tell them 'old experience is a fool,'
- Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule.
- Pluck the mighty from their seat, but set no meek ones in their place;
- Pillory Wisdom in your markets, pelt your offal at her face.
- Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
- Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.
- Bring the old dark ages back without the faith, without the hope,
- Break the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down the slope.
- Authors--atheist, essayist, novelist, realist, rhyrne-ster, play your part,
- Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of Art.
- Rip your brothers' vices open, strip your own foul passions bare;
- Down with Reticence, down with Reverence--forward--naked--let them stare.
- Feed the budding rose of boyhood with the drainage of your sewer;
- Send the drain into the fountain, lest the stream should issue pure.
- Set the maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism,--
- Forward, forward, ay and backward, downward too into the abysm.
- Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men;
- Have we risen from out the beast, then back into the beast again?
- Only 'dust to dust' for me that sicken at your lawless din,
- Dust in wholesome old-world dust before the newer world begin.
- Heated am I? you--you wonder--well, it scarce becomes mine age--
- Patience! let the dying actor mouth his last upon the stage.
- Cries of unprogressive dotage ere the dotard fall asleep?
- Noises of a current narrowing, not the music of a deep?
- Ay, for doubtless I am old, and think gray thoughts, for I am gray:
- After all the stormy changes shall we find a changeless May?
- After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
- Some diviner force to guide us thro' the days I shall not see?
- When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
- Something kindlier, higher, holier--all for each and each for all?
- All the full-brain, half-brain races, led by Justice, Love, and Truth;
- All the millions one at length, with all the visions of my youth?
- All diseases quench'd by Science, no man halt, or deaf or blind;
- Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind?
- Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue,
- I have seen her far away--for is not Earth as yet so young?--
- Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill'd,
- Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd,
- Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
- Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.
- Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then--
- All her harvest all too narrow--who can fancy warless men?
- Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
- Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?
- Dead the new astronomy calls her. . . . On this day and at this hour,
- In this gap between the sandhills, whence you see the Locksley tower,
- Here we met, our latest meeting--Amy--sixty years ago--
- She and I--the moon was falling greenish thro' a rosy glow,
- Just above the gateway tower, and even where you see her now--
- Here we stood and claspt each other, swore the seeming-deathless vow. . . .
- Dead, but how her living glory lights the hall, the dune, the grass!
- Yet the moonlight is the sunlight, and the sun himself will pass.
- Venus near her ! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours,
- Closer on the Sun, perhaps a world of never fading flowers.
- Hesper, whom the poet call'd the Bringer home of all good things.
- All good things may move in Hesper, perfect peoples, perfect kings.
- Hesper--Venus--were we native to that splendour or in Mars,
- We should see the Globe we groan in, fairest of their evening stars.
- Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite,
- Roaring London, raving Paris, in that point of peaceful light?
- Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver-fair,
- Yearn, and clasp the hands and murmur, 'Would to God that we were there'?
- Forward, backward, backward, forward, in the immeasurable sea,
- Sway'd by vaster ebbs and flows than can be known to you or me.
- All the suns--are these but symbols of innumerable man,
- Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan?
- Is there evil but on earth? or pain in every peopled sphere?
- Well be grateful for the sounding watchword, 'Evolution' here.
- Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
- And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
- What are men that He should heed us? cried the king of sacred song;
- Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong,
- While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way,
- All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.
- Many an Æon moulded earth before her highest, man, was born,
- Many an Æon too may pass when earth is manless and forlorn,
- Earth so huge, and yet so bounded--pools of salt, and plots of land--
- Shallow skin of green and azure--chains of mountain, grains of sand!
- Only That which made us, meant us to be mightier by and by,
- Set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens within the human eye,
- Sent the shadow of Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul;
- Boundless inward, in the atom, boundless outward, in the Whole.
- * * * * *
- Here is Locksley Hall, my grandson, here the lion-guarded gate.
- Not to-night in Locksley Hall--to-morrow--you, you come so late.
- Wreck'd--your train--or all but wreck'd? a shatter'd wheel? a vicious boy!
- Good, this forward, you that preach it, is it well to wish you joy?
- Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
- City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?
- There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet,
- Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.
- There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread,
- There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.
- There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
- And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor.
- Nay, your pardon, cry your 'forward,' yours are hope and youth, but I--
- Eighty winters leave the dog too lame to follow with the cry,
- Lame and old, and past his time, and passing now into the night;
- Yet I would the rising race were half as eager for the light.
- Light the fading gleam of Even? light the glimmer of the dawn?
- Aged eyes may take the growing glimmer for the gleam withdrawn.
- Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be
- Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.
- Earth may reach her earthly-worst, or if she gain her earthly-best,
- Would she find her human offspring this ideal man at rest?
- Forward then, but still remember how the course of Time will swerve,
- Crook and turn upon itself in many a backward streaming curve.
- Not the Hall to-night, my grandson! Death and Silence hold their own.
- Leave the Master in the first dark hour of his last sleep alone.
- Worthier soul was he than I am, sound and honest, rustic Squire,
- Kindly landlord, boon companion — youthful jealousy is a liar,
- Cast the poison from your bosom, oust the madness from your brain.
- Let the trampled serpent show you that you have not lived in vain.
- Youthful! youth and age are scholars yet but in the lower school,
- Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.
- Yonder lies our young sea-village--Art and Grace are less and less:
- Science grows and Beauty dwindles--roofs of slated hideousness!
- There is one old Hostel left us where they swing the Locksley shield,
- Till the peasant cow shall butt the 'Lion passant' from his field.
- Poor old Heraldry, poor old History, poor old Poetry, passing hence,
- In the common deluge drowning old political common-sense!
- Poor old voice of eighty crying after voices that have fled!