No More Learning

* * * * *

THE POEM


Were there, below, a spot of holy ground
Where from distress a refuge might be found,
And solitude prepare the soul for heaven;
Sure, nature's God that spot to man had given [1]
Where falls the purple morning far and wide 5
In flakes of light upon the mountain-side;
Where with loud voice the power of water shakes [2]
The leafy wood, or sleeps in quiet lakes.

Yet not unrecompensed the man shall roam,
Who at the call of summer quits his home, 10
And plods through some wide realm o'er vale and height,
Though seeking only holiday delight; [3]
At least, not owning to himself an aim
To which the sage would give a prouder name. [4]
No gains too cheaply earned his fancy cloy, 15
Though every passing zephyr whispers joy;
Brisk toil, alternating with ready ease,
Feeds the clear current of his sympathies. [5]
For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn;
And peeps the far-off spire, his evening bourn! 20
Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head,
And dear the velvet green-sward to his tread: [6]
Moves there a cloud o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
Upward he looks--"and calls it luxury:" [E]
Kind Nature's charities his steps attend; 25
In every babbling brook he finds a friend;
While [7] chastening thoughts of sweetest use, bestowed
By wisdom, moralise his pensive road.
Host of his welcome inn, the noon-tide bower,
To his spare meal he calls the passing poor; 30
He views the sun uplift his golden fire,
Or sink, with heart alive like Memnon's lyre; [F]
Blesses the moon that comes with kindly ray,
To light him shaken by his rugged way. [8]
Back from his sight no bashful children steal; 35
He sits a brother at the cottage-meal; [9]
His humble looks no shy restraint impart;
Around him plays at will the virgin heart.
While unsuspended wheels the village dance,
The maidens eye him with enquiring glance, 40
Much wondering by what fit of crazing care,
Or desperate love, bewildered, he came there. [10]

A hope, that prudence could not then approve,
That clung to Nature with a truant's love,
O'er Gallia's wastes of corn my footsteps led; 45
Her files of road-elms, high above my head
In long-drawn vista, rustling in the breeze;
Or where her pathways straggle as they please
By lonely farms and secret villages.
But lo! the Alps ascending white in air, [11] 50
Toy with the sun and glitter from afar.

And now, emerging from the forest's gloom,
I greet thee, Chartreuse, while I mourn thy doom.
Whither is fled that Power whose frown severe
Awed sober Reason till she crouched in fear? [12] 55
_That_ Silence, once in deathlike fetters bound,
Chains that were loosened only by the sound
Of holy rites chanted in measured round?
[13]

--The voice of blasphemy the fane alarms,
The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. [14] 60
The [15] thundering tube the aged angler hears, [G]
Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. [16]
Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, [17]
Spires, rocks, and lawns a browner night o'erspreads;
Strong terror checks the female peasant's sighs, 65
And start the astonished shades at female eyes.
From Bruno's forest screams the affrighted jay,
And slow the insulted eagle wheels away.
A viewless flight of laughing Demons mock
The Cross, by angels planted [H] on the aerial rock. [18] 70
The "parting Genius" [J] sighs with hollow breath
Along the mystic streams of Life and Death. [K]
Swelling the outcry dull, that long resounds
Portentous through her old woods' trackless bounds,
Vallombre, [L] 'mid her falling fanes deplores 75
For ever broke, the sabbath of her bowers.

More pleased, my foot the hidden margin roves
Of Como, bosomed deep in chestnut groves.
No meadows thrown between, the giddy steeps
Tower, bare or sylvan, from the narrow deeps. 80
--To towns, whose shades of no rude noise [19] complain,
From ringing team apart [20] and grating wain--
To flat-roofed towns, that touch the water's bound,
Or lurk in woody sunless glens profound,
Or, from the bending rocks, obtrusive cling, 85
And o'er the whitened wave their shadows fling--
The pathway leads, as round the steeps it twines; [21]
And Silence loves its purple roof of vines.
The loitering traveller [22] hence, at evening, sees
From rock-hewn steps the sail between the trees; 90
Or marks, 'mid opening cliffs, fair dark-eyed maids
Tend the small harvest of their garden glades;
Or stops the solemn mountain-shades to view
Stretch o'er the pictured mirror broad and blue,
And track the yellow lights from steep to steep, 95
As up the opposing hills they slowly creep. [23]
Aloft, here, half a village shines, arrayed
In golden light; [24] half hides itself in shade:
While, from amid the darkened roofs, the spire,
Restlessly flashing, seems to mount like fire: [25] 100
There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw
Rich golden verdure on the lake [26] below.
Slow glides the sail along the illumined shore,
And steals into the shade the lazy oar;
Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, 105
And amorous music on the water dies.

How blest, delicious scene! the eye that greets
Thy open beauties, or thy lone retreats;
Beholds the unwearied sweep of wood that scales
Thy cliffs; the endless waters of thy vales; [27] 110
Thy lowly cots that sprinkle all the shore, [28]
Each with its [29] household boat beside the door;
[30] Thy torrents shooting from the clear-blue sky;
Thy towns, that cleave, like swallows' nests, on high; [31]
That glimmer hoar in eve's last light descried 115
Dim from the twilight water's shaggy side,
Whence lutes and voices down the enchanted woods
Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods;
[32]--Thy lake, that, streaked or dappled, blue or grey,
'Mid smoking woods gleams hid from morning's ray [33] 120
Slow-travelling down the western hills, to' enfold [34]
Its green-tinged margin in a blaze of gold;
Thy glittering steeples, whence the matin bell
Calls forth the woodman from his desert cell,
And quickens the blithe sound of oars that pass 125
Along the steaming lake, to early mass. [35]
But now farewell to each and all--adieu
To every charm, and last and chief to you, [36]
Ye lovely maidens that in noontide shade
Rest near your little plots of wheaten glade; [37] 130
To all that binds [38] the soul in powerless trance,
Lip-dewing song, and ringlet-tossing dance;
Where sparkling eyes and breaking smiles illume
The sylvan cabin's lute-enlivened gloom.