WELL, you shall have that song which Leonard wrote:
It was last summer on a tour in Wales :
Old James was with me: we that day had been
Up Snowdon; and I wished for Leonard there,
And found him in Llanberis; and that same song
He told me; for I bantered him, and swore
They said he lived shut up within himself,
A tongue-tied Poet in the feverous days,
That, setting the how much before the how,
Cry like the daughters of the horse-leech, "give,
Cram us with all," but count not me the herd !
To which, "They call me what they will," he said: "But I was born too late the fair new forms
That float about the threshold of an age,
Like truths of Science waiting to be caught
Catch me who can, and make the catcher crowned
Are taken by the forelock. Let it be.
But if you care indeed to listen, hear
These measured words, my work of yestermorn.
"We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move;
The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun;
The dark Earth follows wheeled in her ellipse :
And human things returning on themselves
Move onward, leading up the golden year.
"Ah, though the times when some new thought can bud
Are but as poets' seasons when they flower,
Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore
Have ebb and flow conditioning their march,
And slow and sure comes up the golden year.
"When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps,
But smit with freer light shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man
Through all the season of the golden year.
"Shall eagles not be eagles? wrens be wrens?
If all the world were falcons, what of that?
The wonder of the eagle were the less,
But he not less the eagle. Happy days
Roll onward, leading up the golden year.
"Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the Press;
Fly happy with the mission of the Cross;
Knit land to land, and blowing havenward
With silks, and fruits, and spices, clear of toll,
Enrich the markets of the golden year.
"But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good Be each man's rule, and universal Peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Through all the circle of the golden year?"
Thus far he flowed, and ended; whereupon
"Ah, folly!" in mimic cadence answered James -
"Ah, folly! for it lies so far away,
Not in our time, nor in our children's time,
'T is like the second world to us that live,
'T were all as one to fix our hopes on Heaven
As on this vision of the golden year."
With that he struck his staff against the rocks
And broke it, - James, - you know him, - old, but full
Of force and choler, and firm upon his feet,
And like an oaken stock in winter woods,
O'erflourished with the hoary clematis :
Old writers pushed the happy season back,
The more fools they, - we forward: dreamers both :
You most, that in an age, when every hour
Must sweat her sixty minutes to the death,
Live on, God love us, as if the seedsman, rapt
Upon the teeming harvest, should not dip
His hand into the bag: but well I know
That unto him who works, and feels he works,
This same grand year is ever at the doors."
He spoke; and, high above us, I heard them blast
The steep slate-quarry, and the great echo flap
And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff.
Ir little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all;
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