The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation by Various
page 46 of 554 (08%)
page 46 of 554 (08%)
|
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels. Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page. 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; |
|