LOCKSLEY HALL.
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn,—
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall:
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,—
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.