No More Learning

For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow
I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape
Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow _1380
For my light head was hollowed in his lap,
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,
Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent
O'er me his aged face; as if to snap
Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent, _1385
And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.

32.
A soft and healing potion to my lips
At intervals he raised--now looked on high,
To mark if yet the starry giant dips
His zone in the dim sea--now cheeringly, _1390
Though he said little, did he speak to me.
'It is a friend beside thee--take good cheer,
Poor victim, thou art now at liberty! '
I joyed as those a human tone to hear,
Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year. _1395

33.
A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft
Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams;
Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft
The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams
Of morn descended on the ocean-streams, _1400
And still that aged man, so grand and mild,
Tended me, even as some sick mother seems
To hang in hope over a dying child,
Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.

34.
And then the night-wind steaming from the shore, _1405
Sent odours dying sweet across the sea,
And the swift boat the little waves which bore,
Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;
Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see
The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove, _1410
As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee
On sidelong wing, into a silent cove,
Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.


NOTES:
_1223 torches' editions 1818, 1839.
_1385 bent]meant cj. J. Nettleship.


CANTO 4.

1.
The old man took the oars, and soon the bark
Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone; _1415
It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark
With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;
Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,
And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,
Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown _1420
Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood
A changeling of man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.

2.
When the old man his boat had anchored,
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
And very few, but kindly words he said, _1425
And bore me through the tower adown a stair,
Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear
For many a year had fallen. --We came at last
To a small chamber, which with mosses rare
Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed _1430
Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

3.
The moon was darting through the lattices
Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day--
So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,
The old man opened them; the moonlight lay _1435
Upon a lake whose waters wove their play
Even to the threshold of that lonely home:
Within was seen in the dim wavering ray
The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become. _1440

4.
The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,--
And I was on the margin of a lake,
A lonely lake, amid the forests vast
And snowy mountains:--did my spirit wake
From sleep as many-coloured as the snake _1445
That girds eternity? in life and truth,
Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?
Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,
And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?

5.
Thus madness came again,--a milder madness, _1450
Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow
With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;
That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,
By my sick couch was busy to and fro,
Like a strong spirit ministrant of good: _1455
When I was healed, he led me forth to show
The wonders of his sylvan solitude,
And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

6.
He knew his soothing words to weave with skill
From all my madness told; like mine own heart, _1460
Of Cythna would he question me, until
That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,
From his familiar lips--it was not art,
Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke--
When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart _1465
A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke
When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

7.
Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,
My thoughts their due array did re-assume
Through the enchantments of that Hermit old; _1470
Then I bethought me of the glorious doom
Of those who sternly struggle to relume
The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot,
And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom
Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought-- _1475
That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.