No More Learning

Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly,
Feelings had changed:
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence;
Even God's providence
Seeming estranged.

Take her up tenderly;
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!
Ere her limbs frigidly
Stiffen too rigidly,
Decently,--kindly,--
Smooth and compose them;
And her eyes, close them,
Staring so blindly!

Dreadfully staring
Through muddy impurity,
As when with the daring
Last look of despairing
Fixed on futurity.

Perhishing gloomily,
Spurred by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest,--
Cross her hands humbly,
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast!
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behavior,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!

The vigor of this poem is no less remarkable than its pathos. The
versification although carrying the fanciful to the very verge of the
fantastic, is nevertheless admirably adapted to the wild insanity which
is the thesis of the poem.

Among the minor poems of Lord Byron is one which has never received from
the critics the praise which it undoubtedly deserves:--

Though the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate bath declined
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,
And the love which my spirit bath painted
It never bath found but in _thee. _

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,
Because it reminds me of shine;
And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from _thee. _

Though the rock of my last hope is shivered,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To pain--it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn--
They may torture, but shall not subdue me--
'Tis of _thee _that I think--not of them.

Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake,--
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one--
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,
'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error bath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of _thee. _

From the wreck of the past, which bath perished,
Thus much I at least may recall,
It bath taught me that which I most cherished
Deserved to be dearest of all:
In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of _thee.
_

Although the rhythm here is one of the most difficult, the versification
could scarcely be improved. No nobler _theme _ever engaged the pen of
poet. It is the soul-elevating idea that no man can consider himself
entitled to complain of Fate while in his adversity he still retains the
unwavering love of woman.

From Alfred Tennyson, although in perfect sincerity I regard him as the
noblest poet that ever lived, I have left myself time to cite only a
very brief specimen. I call him, and _think _him the noblest of poets,
_not _because the impressions he produces are at _all _times the most
profound--_not _because the poetical excitement which he induces is at
_all _times the most intense--but because it is at all times the most
ethereal--in other words, the most elevating and most pure. No poet is
so little of the earth, earthy. What I am about to read is from his last
long poem, "The Princess":--

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Thus, although in a very cursory and imperfect manner, I have endeavored
to convey to you my conception of the Poetic Principle. It has been my
purpose to suggest that, while this principle itself is strictly and
simply the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty, the manifestation of
the Principle is always found in _an elevating excitement of the soul,
_quite independent of that passion which is the intoxication of the
Heart, or of that truth which is the satisfaction of the Reason. For
in regard to passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade rather than to
elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary--Love--the true, the divine
Eros--the Uranian as distinguished from the Diona an Venus--is
unquestionably the purest and truest of all poetical themes. And in
regard to Truth, if, to be sure, through the attainment of a truth
we are led to perceive a harmony where none was apparent before,
we experience at once the true poetical effect; but this effect is
referable to the harmony alone, and not in the least degree to the truth
which merely served to render the harmony manifest.