No More Learning

One was she among many there, the thralls
Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust; and they
Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;
But she was calm and sad, musing alway _2860
On loftiest enterprise, till on a day
The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute
A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,
Like winds that die in wastes--one moment mute
The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute. _2865

5.
Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,
One moment to great Nature's sacred power
He bent, and was no longer passionless;
But when he bade her to his secret bower
Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore _2870
Her locks in agony, and her words of flame
And mightier looks availed not; then he bore
Again his load of slavery, and became
A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

6.
She told me what a loathsome agony _2875
Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,
Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery,
To dally with the mowing dead--that night
All torture, fear, or horror made seem light
Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day _2880
Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight
Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay
Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.

7.
Her madness was a beam of light, a power
Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave, _2885
Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore
Which might not be withstood--whence none could save--
All who approached their sphere,--like some calm wave
Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;
And sympathy made each attendant slave _2890
Fearless and free, and they began to breathe
Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

8.
The King felt pale upon his noonday throne:
At night two slaves he to her chamber sent,--
One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown _2895
From human shape into an instrument
Of all things ill--distorted, bowed and bent.
The other was a wretch from infancy
Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant
But to obey: from the fire isles came he, _2900
A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea.

9.
They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke
Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,
Until upon their path the morning broke;
They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze, _2905
The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades
Shakes with the sleepless surge;--the Ethiop there
Wound his long arms around her, and with knees
Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her
Among the closing waves out of the boundless air. _2910

10.
'Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain
Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,
He plunged through the green silence of the main,
Through many a cavern which the eternal flood
Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood; _2915
And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,
And among mightier shadows which pursued
His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under
He touched a golden chain--a sound arose like thunder.

11.
'A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling _2920
Beneath the deep--a burst of waters driven
As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:
And in that roof of crags a space was riven
Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,
Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven, _2925
Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,
Through which, his way the diver having cloven,
Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.

12.
'And then,' she said, 'he laid me in a cave
Above the waters, by that chasm of sea, _2930
A fountain round and vast, in which the wave
Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,
Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,
Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell
Like an hupaithric temple wide and high, _2935
Whose aery dome is inaccessible,
Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.

13.
'Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven
With the deep's wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand
Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven _2940
With mystic legends by no mortal hand,
Left there, when thronging to the moon's command,
The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate
Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand
Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state _2945
Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.

14.
'The fiend of madness which had made its prey
Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:
There was an interval of many a day,
And a sea-eagle brought me food the while, _2950
Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,
And who, to be the gaoler had been taught
Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile
Like light and rest at morn and even is sought
That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought. _2955

15.
'The misery of a madness slow and creeping,
Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,
And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,
In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,
Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there; _2960
And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore
Thy mangled limbs for food! --Thus all things were
Transformed into the agony which I wore
Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core.

16.
'Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing, _2965
The eagle, and the fountain, and the air;
Another frenzy came--there seemed a being
Within me--a strange load my heart did bear,
As if some living thing had made its lair
Even in the fountains of my life:--a long _2970
And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,
Then grew, like sweet reality among
Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.

17.
'Methought I was about to be a mother--
Month after month went by, and still I dreamed _2975
That we should soon be all to one another,
I and my child; and still new pulses seemed
To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed
There was a babe within--and, when the rain
Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed, _2980
Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,
I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.

18.
'It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,--
It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,
Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth _2985
It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine
Thine own, beloved!