No More Learning

When rueful moans along the forest swell
Protracted, and the twilight storm foretel,
And, headlong from the cliffs, a deafening load
Tumbles,--and wildering thunder slips abroad;
When on the summits Darkness comes and goes,
Hiding their fiery clouds, their rocks, and snows;
And the fierce torrent, from the lustre broad,
Starts, like a horse beside the flashing road--
She seeks a covert from the battering shower
In the roofed bridge; the bridge, in that dread hour,
Itself all quaking at the torrent's power. 1836. ]


[Variant 50:

1845.

Lines 186-195 were substituted in 1845 for

--Heavy, and dull, and cloudy is the night;
No star supplies the comfort of it's light,
Glimmer the dim-lit Alps, dilated, round,
And one sole light shifts in the vale profound; [s1]
While, [s2] opposite, the waning moon hangs still,
And red, above her [s3] melancholy hill.
By the deep quiet gloom appalled, she sighs, [s4]
Stoops her sick head, and shuts her weary eyes.
She hears, upon the mountain forest's brow,
The death-dog, howling loud and long, below;
--Breaking th' ascending roar of desert floods,
And insect buzz, that stuns the sultry woods, [s5]
On viewless fingers [s6] counts the valley-clock,
Followed by drowsy crow of midnight cock.
--Bursts from the troubled larch's giant boughs
The pie, and, chattering, breaks the night's repose. [s7]
The dry leaves stir as with the serpent's walk,
And, far beneath, Banditti voices talk;
Behind her hill, [s8] the Moon, all crimson, rides,
And his red eyes the slinking Water hides.
--Vexed by the darkness, from the piny gulf
Ascending, nearer howls the famished wolf, [s9]
While thro' the stillness scatters wild dismay
Her babe's small cry, that leads him to his prey. 1820.

s1-s9: see Sub-Variants below. txt. Ed. ]


[Variant 51:

1836.

Now, passing Urseren's open vale serene,
Her quiet streams, and hills of downy green,
Plunge with the Russ embrowned by Terror's breath,
Where danger roofs the narrow walks of death; 1815.
Plunge where the Reuss with fearless might has rent
His headlong way along a dark descent. MS.

In the edition of 1836 these two couplets of 1815 were compressed into
one, and in that edition lines 200-201 preceded lines 198-199. They were
transposed in 1840. ]


[Variant 52:

1836.

By floods, that, thundering from their dizzy height,
Swell more gigantic on the stedfast sight;
Black drizzling crags, that beaten by the din,
Vibrate, as if a voice complained within;
Bare steeps, where Desolation stalks afraid,
Unstedfast, by a blasted yew unstayed;
By cells whose image, trembling as he prays,
Awe-struck, the kneeling peasant scarce surveys;
Loose hanging rocks the Day's bless'd eye that hide,
And crosses reared to Death on every side,
Which with cold kiss Devotion planted near,
And bending water'd with the human tear;
That faded "silent" from her upward eye,
Unmoved with each rude form of Danger nigh, 1815. ]


[Variant 53:

1836.

On as we move a softer prospect opes,
Calm huts, and lawns between, and sylvan slopes. 1815. ]


[Variant 54:

1845.

While mists, suspended on the expiring gale,
Moveless o'er-hang the deep secluded vale, 1815.

Where mists, 1836.

Where mists suspended on the evening gale,
Spread roof-like o'er a deep secluded vale, C.

Given to clear view beneath a hoary veil
Of mists suspended on the evening gale. MS. ]


[Variant 55:

1836.