No More Learning

The rowers lift their oars to view
Each other in the sea;
The landsmen watch the rocking boats
In a pleasant company;
While up the hill go gladlier still
Dear friends by two and three.


III.

The peasant's wife hath looked without
Her cottage door and smiled,
For there the peasant drops his spade
To clasp his youngest child
Which hath no speech, but its hand can reach
And stroke his forehead mild.


IV.

A poet sate that eventide
Within his hall alone,
As silent as its ancient lords
In the coffined place of stone,
When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk,
And the praying monk is gone.


V.

Nor wore the dead a stiller face
Beneath the cerement's roll:
His lips refusing out in words
Their mystic thoughts to dole,
His steadfast eye burnt inwardly,
As burning out his soul.


VI.

You would not think that brow could e'er
Ungentle moods express,
Yet seemed it, in this troubled world,
Too calm for gentleness,
When the very star that shines from far
Shines trembling ne'ertheless.


VII.

It lacked, all need, the softening light
Which other brows supply:
We should conjoin the scathed trunks
Of our humanity,
That each leafless spray entwining may
Look softer 'gainst the sky.


VIII.

None gazed within the poet's face,
The poet gazed in none;
He threw a lonely shadow straight
Before the moon and sun,
Affronting nature's heaven-dwelling creatures
With wrong to nature done:


IX.

Because this poet daringly,
--The nature at his heart,
And that quick tune along his veins
He could not change by art,--
Had vowed his blood of brotherhood
To a stagnant place apart.


X.
He did not vow in fear, or wrath,
Or grief's fantastic whim,
But, weights and shows of sensual things
Too closely crossing him,
On his soul's eyelid the pressure slid
And made its vision dim.


XI.

And darkening in the dark he strove
'Twixt earth and sea and sky
To lose in shadow, wave and cloud,
His brother's haunting cry:
The winds were welcome as they swept,
God's five-day work he would accept,
But let the rest go by.


XII.

He cried, "O touching, patient Earth
That weepest in thy glee,
Whom God created very good,
And very mournful, we!
Thy voice of moan doth reach His throne,
As Abel's rose from thee.


XIII.

"Poor crystal sky with stars astray!
Mad winds that howling go
From east to west! perplexed seas
That stagger from their blow!
O motion wild! O wave defiled!
Our curse hath made you so.


XIV.

'_We! _ and _our_ curse!