No More Learning

[_Alone_. ] See how in _his_ head only, hope still lingers,
Who evermore to empty rubbish clings,
With greedy hand grubs after precious things,
And leaps for joy when some poor worm he fingers!
That such a human voice should dare intrude,
Where all was full of ghostly tones and features!
Yet ah! this once, my gratitude
Is due to thee, most wretched of earth's creatures.
Thou snatchedst me from the despairing state
In which my senses, well nigh crazed, were sunken.
The apparition was so giant-great,
That to a very dwarf my soul had shrunken.
I, godlike, who in fancy saw but now
Eternal truth's fair glass in wondrous nearness,
Rejoiced in heavenly radiance and clearness,
Leaving the earthly man below;
I, more than cherub, whose free force
Dreamed, through the veins of nature penetrating,
To taste the life of Gods, like them creating,
Behold me this presumption expiating!
A word of thunder sweeps me from my course.
Myself with thee no longer dare I measure;
Had I the power to draw thee down at pleasure;
To hold thee here I still had not the force.
Oh, in that blest, ecstatic hour,
I felt myself so small, so great;
Thou drovest me with cruel power
Back upon man's uncertain fate
What shall I do? what slum, thus lonely?
That impulse must I, then, obey?
Alas! our very deeds, and not our sufferings only,
How do they hem and choke life's way!
To all the mind conceives of great and glorious
A strange and baser mixture still adheres;
Striving for earthly good are we victorious?
A dream and cheat the better part appears.
The feelings that could once such noble life inspire
Are quenched and trampled out in passion's mire.
Where Fantasy, erewhile, with daring flight
Out to the infinite her wings expanded,
A little space can now suffice her quite,
When hope on hope time's gulf has wrecked and stranded.
Care builds her nest far down the heart's recesses,
There broods o'er dark, untold distresses,
Restless she sits, and scares thy joy and peace away;
She puts on some new mask with each new day,
Herself as house and home, as wife and child presenting,
As fire and water, bane and blade;
What never hits makes thee afraid,
And what is never lost she keeps thee still lamenting.
Not like the Gods am I! Too deep that truth is thrust!
But like the worm, that wriggles through the dust;
Who, as along the dust for food he feels,
Is crushed and buried by the traveller's heels.
Is it not dust that makes this lofty wall
Groan with its hundred shelves and cases;
The rubbish and the thousand trifles all
That crowd these dark, moth-peopled places?
Here shall my craving heart find rest?
Must I perchance a thousand books turn over,
To find that men are everywhere distrest,
And here and there one happy one discover?
Why grin'st thou down upon me, hollow skull?
But that thy brain, like mine, once trembling, hoping,
Sought the light day, yet ever sorrowful,
Burned for the truth in vain, in twilight groping?
Ye, instruments, of course, are mocking me;
Its wheels, cogs, bands, and barrels each one praises.
I waited at the door; you were the key;
Your ward is nicely turned, and yet no bolt it raises.
Unlifted in the broadest day,
Doth Nature's veil from prying eyes defend her,
And what (he chooses not before thee to display,
Not all thy screws and levers can force her to surrender.