No More Learning

_103_

SICK, Cornificius, is thy friend,
Sick to the heart: and sees no end
Of wretched thoughts that gathering fast
Threaten to wear him out at last.

And yet you never come and bring,
Though 'twere the least and easiest thing,
A comfort in that talk of thine.
You vex me. This to love of mine?

Prithee a little talk, for ease,
Full as the tears of sad Simonides!

LEIGH HUNT.


_110_

AVAUNT, ye vain bombastic crew,
Crickets that swill no Attic dew:
Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow,
Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro:
A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools,
The tinkling cymbals of the schools!
Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye,
With all our pretty company!
I'm sailing for the blissful shore,
Great Siro's high recondite lore,
That haven where my life shall be
From every tyrant passion free.
You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell,
Sweet muses mine, for truth to tell
Sweet were ye once, but now begone;
And yet, and yet, return anon,
And when I write, at whiles be seen
In visits shy and far between.

T. H. WARREN.

I append Clough's _Lines Written in a Lecture Room_. The theme is that
of Vergil inverted.
But the mood in either poet is the same--that mood
of passionate revolt against academicism which never comes to some
people and never departs from others:

AWAY, haunt thou not me,
Thou dull Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skiey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?

A. H. CLOUGH.


_116_

Dryden's version of this piece shows him at his best as a translator of
Vergil. 'Methinks I come,' he writes, 'like a malefactor, to make a
speech upon the gallows, and to warn all other poets, by my sad example,
from the sacrilege of translating Vergil. ' But in the _Georgics_, at any
rate, which he reckons 'more perfect in their kind than even the divine
Aeneids,' he can challenge comparison with most of his rivals.

O HAPPY, if he knew his happy state,
The swain, who, free from bus'ness and debate,
Receives his easy food from Nature's hand,
And just returns of cultivated land!
No palace, with a lofty gate, he wants,
T' admit the tides of early visitants,
With eager eyes devouring, as they pass,
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass;
No statues threaten, from high pedestals;
No Persian arras hides his homely walls,
With antic vests, which, through their shady fold,
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold:
He boasts no wool, whose native white is dy'd
With purple poison of Assyrian pride:
No costly drugs of Araby defile,
With foreign scents, the sweetness of his oil:
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With home-bred plenty, the rich owner bless;
And rural pleasures crown his happiness.
Unvex'd with quarrels, undisturb'd with noise,
The country king his peaceful realm enjoys--
Cool grots, and living lakes, the flow'ry pride
Of meads, and streams that through the valley glide,
And shady groves that easy sleep invite,
And, after toilsome days, a sweet repose at night.
Wild beasts of nature in his woods abound;
And youth of labour patient, plough the ground,
Inur'd to hardship, and to homely fare.
Nor venerable age is wanting there,
In great examples to the youthful train;
Nor are the gods ador'd with rites profane.
From hence Astraea took her flight, and here
The prints of her departing steps appear.