No More Learning

What are the stars? There is the sun, the sun!
And the most patient brilliance of the moon!
And stars by thousands! Point me out the way
To any one particular beauteous star, 100
And I will flit into it with my lyre,
And make its silvery splendour pant with bliss.
I have heard the cloudy thunder: Where is power?
Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity
Makes this alarum in the elements,
While I here idle listen on the shores
In fearless yet in aching ignorance?
O tell me, lonely Goddess, by thy harp,
That waileth every morn and eventide,
Tell me why thus I rave, about these groves! 110
Mute thou remainest--Mute! yet I can read
A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:
Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.
Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal. "--Thus the God, 120
While his enkindled eyes, with level glance
Beneath his white soft temples, stedfast kept
Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne.
Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush
All the immortal fairness of his limbs;
Most like the struggle at the gate of death;
Or liker still to one who should take leave
Of pale immortal death, and with a pang
As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse
Die into life: so young Apollo anguish'd: 130
His very hair, his golden tresses famed
Kept undulation round his eager neck.
During the pain Mnemosyne upheld
Her arms as one who prophesied. --At length
Apollo shriek'd;--and lo!
from all his limbs
Celestial * * * * *
* * * * * * *

THE END.


NOTE.

PAGE 184, l. 310. over-foolish, Giant-Gods? _MS. _: over-foolish giant,
Gods? _1820. _




NOTES.


ADVERTISEMENT.

PAGE 2. See Introduction to _Hyperion_, p. 245.


INTRODUCTION TO LAMIA.

_Lamia_, like _Endymion_, is written in the heroic couplet, but the
difference in style is very marked. The influence of Dryden's
narrative-poems (his translations from Boccaccio and Chaucer) is clearly
traceable in the metre, style, and construction of the later poem.