No More Learning

For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set _65
A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not--he went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

13.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, _70
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. _75

14.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made, _80
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--

15.
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, _85
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.

16.
Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life--
Snakes and ill worms--endure its mortal dew.
The trophies of the clime's victorious strife-- _90
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolf's dark gray scalp who tracked him there.

17.
And at the utmost point. . . stood there
The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, _95
Thatched with broad flags.
An outlawed murderer
Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot
When he was cold. The birds that were his grave
Fell dead after their feast in Vado's wave.

18.
There must have burned within Marenghi's breast _100
That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,
(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon. . .
More joyous than free heaven's majestic cope
To his oppressor), warring with decay,--
Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day. _105

19.
Nor was his state so lone as you might think.
He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,
And every seagull which sailed down to drink
Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.
And each one, with peculiar talk and play, _110
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.

20.
And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;
And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,
In many entangled figures quaint and sweet _115
To some enchanted music they would dance--
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.

21.
He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;
And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read _120
Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves.

22.