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;

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, 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 Sun,

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

yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley

Hall!

Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the rooftree fall.

Comes a vapor 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.

LITTLE longer in the light, love, let me be.
The air is warm.

I hear the cuckoo's last good-night float from
below the Farm.

the copse

A little longer, Sister sweet, your hand in mine, — on this old seat.

In

yon red gable, which the rose creeps round and o'er, your casement shines

Against the yellow west, o'er those forlorn and solitary

pines.

The long, long day is nearly done. How silent all the place is grown!

The stagnant levels, one and all, are burning in the distant marsh,

Hark! 't was the bittern's parting call. The frogs are out with murmurs harsh

The low reeds vibrate. See! the sun catches the long pools one by one.

A moment, and those orange flats will turn dead gray or lurid white.

Look up! o'erhead the winnowing bats are come and gone, eluding sight.

The little worms are out. The snails begin to move down shining trails,

With slow pink cones, and soft wet horns. The gardenbowers are dim with dew.

With sparkling drops the white-rose thorns are twinkling, where the sun slips through

Those reefs of coral buds hung free below the purple Judas-tree.

From the warm upland comes a gust made fragrant with the brown hay there.

The meek cows, with their white horns thrust above the hedge, stand still and stare.

The steaming horses from the wains droop o'er the tank their plaited manes.

And o'er yon hillside brown and barren (where you and I as children played,

Starting the rabbit to his warren), I hear the sandy, shrill cascade

Leap down upon the vale, and spill his heart out round the muffled mill.

O can it be for nothing only that God has shown his world to me?

Or but to leave the heart more lonely with loss of beauty

O closer, closer, Sister dear. . . nay, I have kissed away that tear.

God bless you, dear, for that kind thought which only upon tears could rise!

God bless you for the love that sought to hide them in those drooping eyes,

Whose lids I kiss! ... poor lids, so red! but let my kiss fall there instead.

Yes, sad indeed it seems, each night, - and sadder, dear, for your sweet sake !

To watch the last low lingering light, and know not where the morn may break.

To-night we sit together here. To-morrow night will come . . . ah, where?

O child! howe'er assured be faith, to say farewell is fraught with gloom,

When, like one flower, the germs of death and genius ripen toward the tomb;

And earth each day, as some fond face at parting, gains

a graver grace.

There's not a flower, there's not a tree in this old garden where we sit,

But that some fragrant memory is closed and folded up

in it.

To-night the dog-rose smells as wild, as fresh, as when I was a child.