No More Learning

Doth not earth speak enough
Of change and of undoing,
Without a seraph's witness? Oceans rough
With tempest, pastoral swards
Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing
The bolt fallen yesterday,
That shake their piny heads, as who would say
"We are too beautiful for our decay"--
Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone
Earth to her earthly moan!

_Voice of all things. _ Is there no moan but hers?

_Ador. _ Hearest thou the attestation
Of the roused universe
Like a desert-lion shaking
Dews of silence from its mane?
With an irrepressive passion
Uprising at once,
Rising up and forsaking
Its solemn state in the circle of suns,
To attest the pain
Of him who stands (O patience sweet! )
In his own hand-prints of creation,
With human feet?

_Voice of all things. _ Is there no moan but ours?

_Zerah. _ Forms, Spaces, Motions wide,
O meek, insensate things,
O congregated matters! who inherit,
Instead of vital powers,
Impulsions God-supplied;
Instead of influent spirit,
A clear informing beauty;
Instead of creature-duty,
Submission calm as rest.
Lights, without feet or wings,
In golden courses sliding!
Glooms, stagnantly subsiding,
Whose lustrous heart away was prest
Into the argent stars!
Ye crystal firmamental bars
That hold the skyey waters free
From tide or tempest's ecstasy!
Airs universal! thunders lorn
That wait your lightnings in cloud-cave
Hewn out by the winds! O brave
And subtle elements! the Holy
Hath charged me by your voice with folly. [D]
Enough, the mystic arrow leaves its wound.
Return ye to your silences inborn,
Or to your inarticulated sound!

_Ador. _ Zerah!

_Zerah. _ Wilt _thou_ rebuke?
God hath rebuked me, brother. I am weak.

_Ador. _ Zerah, my brother Zerah!