No More Learning

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:--

No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,--or else swoon to death.

J. KEATS.




199. THE TERROR OF DEATH.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love--then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

J. KEATS.




200. DESIDERIA.

Surprized by joy--impatient as the wind--
I turn'd to share the transport--Oh, with whom
But Thee--deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love recall'd thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? Through what power
Even for the least division of an hour
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

To my most grievous loss?
--That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

W. WORDSWORTH.




201.

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping,
I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in
thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions
of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to
me there
And tell me our love is remember'd even in the sky!

Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear
When our voices, commingling, breathed like one on
the ear;
And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison
rolls,
I think, O my love! 'tis thy voice, from the Kingdom
of Souls
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

T. MOORE.




202. ELEGY ON THYRZA.

And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And forms so soft and charms so rare
Too soon return'd to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers and weeds at will may grow
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I loved and long must love
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well.

Yet did I love thee to the last,
As fervently as thou
Who didst not change through all the past
And canst not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.