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

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Truly, she herself had suffered - Perish in thy selfcontempt!

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 over

flow.

I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should

do?

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 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.

page.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous

Mother-Age!

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,

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 men:

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:

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

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

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 thunder-storm;

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

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose

runs,

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

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?

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

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

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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.

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

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-blossomed bower, hangs the heavyfruited 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.

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