No More Learning

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit 40
To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our Mortality predominates,
And men are--what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,
[_The Shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard. _
The natural music of the mountain reed--
For here the patriarchal days are not
A pastoral fable--pipes in the liberal air, 50
Mixed with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;[121]
My soul would drink those echoes. Oh, that I were
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment[122]--born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!

_Enter from below a_ CHAMOIS HUNTER.

_Chamois Hunter_. Even so
This way the Chamois leapt: her nimble feet
Have baffled me; my gains to-day will scarce
Repay my break-neck travail. --What is here?
Who seems not of my trade, and yet hath reached 60
A height which none even of our mountaineers,
Save our best hunters, may attain: his garb
Is goodly, his mien manly, and his air
Proud as a free-born peasant's, at this distance:
I will approach him nearer.

_Man_. (_not perceiving the other_). To be thus--
Grey-haired with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless,[123]
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,
Which but supplies a feeling to Decay--
And to be thus, eternally but thus, 70
Having been otherwise! Now furrowed o'er
With wrinkles, ploughed by moments, not by years
And hours, all tortured into ages--hours
Which I outlive! --Ye toppling crags of ice!
Ye Avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict;[124] but ye pass,
And only fall on things that still would live;
On the young flourishing forest, or the hut 80
And hamlet of the harmless villager.

_C. Hun_. The mists begin to rise from up the valley;
I'll warn him to descend, or he may chance
To lose at once his way and life together.

_Man_. The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell,[aw]
Whose every wave breaks on a living shore,
Heaped with the damned like pebbles. --I am giddy. [125]

_C. Hun_. I must approach him cautiously; if near, 90
A sudden step will startle him, and he
Seems tottering already.

_Man_. Mountains have fallen,
Leaving a gap in the clouds, and with the shock
Rocking their Alpine brethren; filling up
The ripe green valleys with Destruction's splinters;
Damming the rivers with a sudden dash,
Which crushed the waters into mist, and made
Their fountains find another channel--thus,
Thus, in its old age, did Mount Rosenberg--[126]
Why stood I not beneath it?

_C. Hun_. Friend!