No More Learning

They have not shed a many tears,
Dear eyes, since first I knew them well.

Yet tears they shed: they had their part
Of sorrow: for when time was ripe,
The still affection of the heart
Became an outward breathing type,
That into stillness past again,
And left a want unknown before;
Although the loss that brought us pain,
That loss but made us love the more.

With farther lookings on. The kiss,
The woven arms, seem but to be
Weak symbols of the settled bliss,
The comfort, I have found in thee:
But that God bless thee, dear--who wrought
Two spirits to one equal mind--
With blessings beyond hope or thought,
With blessings which no words can find.

Arise, and let us wander forth,
To yon old mill across the wolds;
For look, the sunset, south and north, [35]
Winds all the vale in rosy folds,
And fires your narrow casement glass,
Touching the sullen pool below:
On the chalk-hill the bearded grass
Is dry and dewless. Let us go.



[Footnote 1: 1833. Scarce makes me. ]

[Footnote 2: 1833. Darling. ]

[Footnote 3: 1833. Own sweet wife. ]

[Footnote 4: This stanza was added in 1842. ]

[Footnote 5: 1833.

My father's mansion, mounted high
Looked down upon the village spire.
I was a long and listless boy,
And son and heir unto the squire. ]


[Footnote 6: 1833. In these dear walls. ]

[Footnote 7: 1833.

I often heard the cooing dove
In firry woodlands mourn alone. ]


[Footnote 8: 1833. The long mosses. ]

[Footnote 9: 1842-1851. Where. ]

[Footnote 10: This stanza was added in 1842, taking the place of the
following which was excised:--

Sometimes I whistled in the wind,
Sometimes I angled, thought and deed
Torpid, as swallows left behind
That winter 'neath the floating weed:
At will to wander every way
From brook to brook my sole delight,
As lithe eels over meadows gray
Oft shift their glimmering pool by night.

In 1833 this stanza ran thus:--

I loved from off the bridge to hear
The rushing sound the water made,
And see the fish that everywhere
In the back-current glanced and played;
Low down the tall flag-flower that sprung
Beside the noisy stepping-stones,
And the massed chestnut boughs that hung
Thick-studded over with white cones,]


[Footnote 11: In 1833 the following took the place of the above stanza
which was added in 1842:--

How dear to me in youth, my love,
Was everything about the mill,
The black and silent pool above,
The pool beneath that ne'er stood still,
The meal sacks on the whitened floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door--
Made misty with the floating meal!

Thus in 1833:--

Remember you that pleasant day
When, after roving in the woods,
('Twas April then) I came and lay
Beneath those gummy chestnut bud
That glistened in the April blue,
Upon the slope so smooth and cool,
I lay and never thought of _you_,
But angled in the deep mill pool. ]


[Footnote 12: Thus in 1833:--

A water-rat from off the bank
Plunged in the stream. With idle care,
Downlooking thro' the sedges rank,
I saw your troubled image there.
Upon the dark and dimpled beck
It wandered like a floating light,
A full fair form, a warm white neck,
And two white arms--how rosy white! ]


[Footnote 13: 1872.