No More Learning

and now at last
My work beneath the moon is done,
And I shall laugh, at rising sun.

* * * * *

But let me pause or ere I cover
All my treasures darkly over:
I will speak not in thine ears,
Only tell my beaded tears
Silently, most silently.
When the last is calmly told,
Let that same moist rosary
With the rest sepulchred be,
Finished now! The darksome mould
Sealeth up the darksome pit.
I will lay no stone on it,
Grasses I will sow instead,
Fit for Queen Titania's tread;
Flowers, encoloured with the sun,
And ~ai ai~ written upon none;
Thus, whenever saileth by
The Lady World of dainty eye,
Not a grief shall here remain,
Silken shoon to damp or stain:
And while she lisps, "I have not seen
Any place more smooth and clean" . . .
Here she cometh! --Ha, ha! --who
Laughs as loud as I can do?




_EARTH AND HER PRAISERS. _


I.

The Earth is old;
Six thousand winters make her heart a-cold;
The sceptre slanteth from her palsied hold.
She saith, "'Las me! God's word that I was 'good'
Is taken back to heaven,
From whence when any sound comes, I am riven
By some sharp bolt; and now no angel would
Descend with sweet dew-silence on my mountains,
To glorify the lovely river fountains
That gush along their side:
I see--O weary change!
--I see instead
This human wrath and pride,
These thrones and tombs, judicial wrong and blood,
And bitter words are poured upon mine head--
'O Earth! thou art a stage for tricks unholy,
A church for most remorseful melancholy;
Thou art so spoilt, we should forget we had
An Eden in thee, wert thou not so sad! '
Sweet children, I am old! ye, every one,
Do keep me from a portion of my sun.
Give praise in change for brightness!
That I may shake my hills in infiniteness
Of breezy laughter, as in youthful mirth,
To hear Earth's sons and daughters praising Earth. "

II.

Whereupon a child began
With spirit running up to man
As by angels' shining ladder,
(May he find no cloud above! )
Seeming he had ne'er been sadder
All his days than now,
Sitting in the chestnut grove,
With that joyous overflow
Of smiling from his mouth o'er brow
And cheek and chin, as if the breeze
Leaning tricksy from the trees
To part his golden hairs, had blown
Into an hundred smiles that one.

III.

"O rare, rare Earth! " he saith,
"I will praise thee presently;
Not to-day; I have no breath:
I have hunted squirrels three--
Two ran down in the furzy hollow
Where I could not see nor follow,
One sits at the top of the filbert-tree,
With a yellow nut and a mock at me:
Presently it shall be done!
When I see which way these two have run,
When the mocking one at the filbert-top
Shall leap a-down and beside me stop,
Then, rare Earth, rare Earth,
Will I pause, having known thy worth,
To say all good of thee! "

IV.

Next a lover,--with a dream
'Neath his waking eyelids hidden,
And a frequent sigh unbidden,
And an idlesse all the day
Beside a wandering stream,
And a silence that is made
Of a word he dares not say,--
Shakes slow his pensive head:
"Earth, Earth! " saith he,
"If spirits, like thy roses, grew
On one stalk, and winds austere
Could but only blow them near,
To share each other's dew;--
If, when summer rains agree
To beautify thy hills, I knew
Looking off them I might see
Some one very beauteous too,--
Then Earth," saith he,
"I would praise .