No More Learning

There was no such thing. --
It was the man she loved, even Lionel,
The lover Lionel, the happy Lionel,
All joy; who drew the happy atmosphere
Of my unhappy sighs, fed with my tears,
To him the honey dews of orient hope.
Oh! rather had some loathly ghastful brow,
Half-bursten from the shroud, in cere cloth bound,
The dead skin withering on the fretted bone,
The very spirit of Paleness made still paler
By the shuddering moonlight, fix'd his eyes on mine
Horrible with the anger and the heat
Of the remorseful soul alive within,
And damn'd unto his loathed tenement.
Methinks I could have sooner met that gaze!
Oh, how her choice did leap forth from his eyes!
Oh, how her love did clothe itself in smiles
About his lips! This was the very arch-mock
And insolence of uncontrolled Fate,
When the effect weigh'd seas upon my head
To twit me with the cause.
Why how was this?
Could he not walk what paths he chose, nor breathe
What airs he pleased! Was not the wide world free,
With all her interchange of hill and plain
To him as well as me? I know not, faith:
But Misery, like a fretful, wayward child,
Refused to look his author in the face,
Must he come my way too? Was not the South,
The East, the West, all open, if he had fall'n
In love in twilight? Why should he come my way,
Robed in those robes of light I must not wear,
With that great crown of beams about his brows?
Come like an angel to a damned soul?
To tell him of the bliss he had with God;
Come like a careless and a greedy heir,
That scarce can wait the reading of the will
Before he takes possession? Was mine a mood
To be invaded rudely, and not rather
A sacred, secret, unapproached woe
Unspeakable? I was shut up with grief;
She took the body of my past delight,
Narded, and swathed and balm'd it for herself,
And laid it in a new-hewn sepulchre,
Where man had never lain. I was led mute
Into her temple like a sacrifice;
I was the high-priest in her holiest place,
Not to be loudly broken in upon.
Oh! friend, thoughts deep and heavy as these well-nigh
O'erbore the limits of my brain; but he
Bent o'er me, and my neck his arm upstay'd
From earth. I thought it was an adder's fold,
And once I strove to disengage myself,
But fail'd, I was so feeble. She was there too:
She bent above me too: her cheek was pale,
Oh! very fair and pale: rare pity had stolen
The living bloom away, as tho' a red rose
Should change into a white one suddenly.
Her eyes, I saw, were full of tears in the morn,
And some few drops of that distressful rain
Being wafted on the wind, drove in my sight,
And being there they did break forth afresh
In a new birth, immingled with my own,
And still bewept my grief. Keeping unchanged
The purport of their coinage. Her long ringlets,
Drooping and beaten with the plaining wind,
Did brush my forehead in their to-and-fro:
For in the sudden anguish of her heart
Loosed from their simple thrall they had flowed abroad,
And onward floating in a full, dark wave,
Parted on either side her argent neck,
Mantling her form half way. She, when I woke,
After my refluent health made tender quest
Unanswer'd, for I spoke not: for the sound
Of that dear voice so musically low,
And now first heard with any sense of pain,
As it had taken life away before,
Choked all the syllables that in my throat
Strove to uprise, laden with mournful thanks,
From my full heart: and ever since that hour,
My voice hath somewhat falter'd--and what wonder
That when hope died, part of her eloquence
Died with her? He, the blissful lover, too,
From his great hoard of happiness distill'd
Some drops of solace; like a vain rich man,
That, having always prosper'd in the world,
Folding his hands deals comfortable words
To hearts wounded for ever; yet, in truth,
Fair speech was his and delicate of phrase,
Falling in whispers on the sense, address'd
More to the inward than the outward ear,
As rain of the midsummer midnight soft
Scarce-heard, recalling fragrance and the green
Of the dead spring--such as in other minds
Had film'd the margents of the recent wound.
And why was I to darken their pure love,
If, as I knew, they two did love each other,
Because my own was darken'd? Why was I
To stand within the level of their hopes,
Because my hope was widow'd, like the cur
In the child's adage?