Page:Poems - Tennyson (1843) - Volume 2 of 2.djvu/122

 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 for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' 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—