FullReads

The gipsies, whom we met below,
They, too, have long roam’d to and fro;
They ramble, leaving, where they pass,
Their fragments on the cumber’d grass.
And often to some kindly place
Chance guides the migratory race,
Where, though long wanderings intervene,
They recognise a former scene.
The dingy tents are pitch’d; the fires
Give to the wind their wavering spires;
In dark knots crouch round the wild flame
Their children, as when first they came;
They see their shackled beasts again
Move, browsing, up the gray-wall’d lane.
Signs are not wanting, which might raise
The ghost in them of former days–
Signs are not wanting, if they would;
Suggestions to disquietude.
For them, for all, time’s busy touch,
While it mends little, troubles much.
Their joints grow stiffer–but the year
Runs his old round of dubious cheer;
Chilly they grow–yet winds in March,
Still, sharp as ever, freeze and parch;
They must live still–and yet, God knows,
Crowded and keen the country grows;
It seems as if, in their decay,
The law grew stronger every day.
So might they reason, so compare,
Fausta, times past with times that are.
But no!–they rubb’d through yesterday
In their hereditary way,
And they will rub through, if they can,
To-morrow on the self-same plan,
Till death arrive to supersede,
For them, vicissitude and need.

The poet, to whose mighty heart
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
Subdues that energy to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
Though he move mountains, though his day
Be pass’d on the proud heights of sway,
Though he hath loosed a thousand chains,
Though he hath borne immortal pains,
Action and suffering though he know–
He hath not lived, if he lives so.
He sees, in some great-historied land,
A ruler of the people stand,
Sees his strong thought in fiery flood
Roll through the heaving multitude
Exults–yet for no moment’s space
Envies the all-regarded place.
Beautiful eyes meet his–and he
Bears to admire uncravingly;
They pass–he, mingled with the crowd,
Is in their far-off triumphs proud.
From some high station he looks down,
At sunset, on a populous town;
Surveys each happy group, which fleets,
Toil ended, through the shining streets,
Each with some errand of its own–
And does not say: I am alone.
He sees the gentle stir of birth
When morning purifies the earth;
He leans upon a gate and sees
The pastures, and the quiet trees.
Low, woody hill, with gracious bound,
Folds the still valley almost round;
The cuckoo, loud on some high lawn,
Is answer’d from the depth of dawn;
In the hedge straggling to the stream,
Pale, dew-drench’d, half-shut roses gleam;
But, where the farther side slopes down,
He sees the drowsy new-waked clown
In his white quaint-embroider’d frock
Make, whistling, tow’rd his mist-wreathed flock–
Slowly, behind his heavy tread,
The wet, flower’d grass heaves up its head.
Lean’d on his gate, he gazes–tears
Are in his eyes, and in his ears
The murmur of a thousand years.
Before him he sees life unroll,
A placid and continuous whole–
That general life, which does not cease,
Whose secret is not joy, but peace;
That life, whose dumb wish is not miss’d
If birth proceeds, if things subsist;
The life of plants, and stones, and rain,
The life he craves–if not in vain
Fate gave, what chance shall not control,
His sad lucidity of soul.