No More Learning

FANNY KEMBLE (BUTLER)





THE POET TO HIS WIFE.

_("A toi, toujours a toi. ")_

[XXXIX. , 1823]


To thee, all time to thee,
My lyre a voice shall be!
Above all earthly fashion,
Above mere mundane rage,
Your mind made it my passion
To write for noblest stage.

Whoe'er you be, send blessings to her--she
Was sister of my soul immortal, free!
My pride, my hope, my shelter, my resource,
When green hoped not to gray to run its course;
She was enthroned Virtue under heaven's dome,
My idol in the shrine of curtained home.






LES VOIX INTERIEURES. --1840.





THE BLINDED BOURBONS.

_("Qui leur eut dit l'austere destinee? ")_

[II. v. , November, 1836. ]


Who _then_, to them[1] had told the Future's story?
Or said that France, low bowed before their glory,
One day would mindful be
Of them and of their mournful fate no more,
Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er
The unremembering sea?

That their old Tuileries should see the fall
Of blazons from its high heraldic hall,
Dismantled, crumbling, prone;[2]
Or that, o'er yon dark Louvre's architrave[3]
A Corsican, as yet unborn, should grave
An eagle, then unknown?

That gay St. Cloud another lord awaited,
Or that in scenes Le Notre's art created
For princely sport and ease,
Crimean steeds, trampling the velvet glade,
Should browse the bark beneath the stately shade
Of the great Louis' trees?

_Fraser's Magazine. _

[Footnote 1: The young princes, afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles X. ]

[Footnote 2: The Tuileries, several times stormed by mobs, was so
irreparably injured by the Communists that, in 1882, the Paris Town
Council decided that the ruins should be cleared away. ]

[Footnote 3: After the Eagle and the Bee superseded the Lily-flowers,
the Third Napoleon's initial "N" flourished for two decades, but has
been excised or plastered over, the words "National Property" or
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" being cut in the stone profusely. ]





TO ALBERT DURER.

_("Dans les vieilles forets. ")_

[X. , April 20, 1837. ]


Through ancient forests--where like flowing tide
The rising sap shoots vigor far and wide,
Mounting the column of the alder dark
And silv'ring o'er the birch's shining bark--
Hast thou not often, Albert Durer, strayed
Pond'ring, awe-stricken--through the half-lit glade,
Pallid and trembling--glancing not behind
From mystic fear that did thy senses bind,
Yet made thee hasten with unsteady pace?
Oh, Master grave! whose musings lone we trace
Throughout thy works we look on reverently.