No More Learning

Our fancies shall their plumage catch
From fairest island-birds,
Whose eggs let young ones out at hatch,
Born singing! then our words
Unconsciously shall take the dyes
Of those prodigious fantasies.

XXV.

Yea, soon, no consonant unsmooth
Our smile-tuned lips shall reach;
Sounds sweet as Hellas spake in youth
Shall glide into our speech:
(What music, certes, can you find
As soft as voices which are kind? )

XXVI.

And often, by the joy without
And in us, overcome,
We, through our musing, shall let float
Such poems,--sitting dumb,--
As Pindar might have writ if he
Had tended sheep in Arcady;

XXVII.

Or AEschylus--the pleasant fields
He died in, longer knowing;
Or Homer, had men's sins and shields
Been lost in Meles flowing;
Or Poet Plato, had the undim
Unsetting Godlight broke on him.

XXVIII.

Choose me the cave most worthy choice,
To make a place for prayer,
And I will choose a praying voice
To pour our spirits there:
How silverly the echoes run!
_Thy will be done,--thy will be done. _

XXIX.

Gently yet strangely uttered words!
They lift me from my dream;
The island fadeth with its swards
That did no more than seem:
The streams are dry, no sun could find--
The fruits are fallen, without wind.

XXX.

So oft the doing of God's will
Our foolish wills undoeth!
And yet what idle dream breaks ill,
Which morning-light subdueth?
And who would murmur and misdoubt,
When God's great sunrise finds him out?




_THE SOUL'S TRAVELLING. _

~Ede noerous
Petasai tarsous. ~

SYNESIUS.


I.

I dwell amid the city ever.
The great humanity which beats
Its life along the stony streets,
Like a strong and unsunned river
In a self-made course,
I sit and hearken while it rolls.
Very sad and very hoarse
Certes is the flow of souls;
Infinitest tendencies
By the finite prest and pent,
In the finite, turbulent:
How we tremble in surprise
When sometimes, with an awful sound,
God's great plummet strikes the ground!

II.

The champ of the steeds on the silver bit,
As they whirl the rich man's carriage by;
The beggar's whine as he looks at it,--
But it goes too fast for charity;
The trail on the street of the poor man's broom,
That the lady who walks to her palace-home,
On her silken skirt may catch no dust;
The tread of the business-men who must
Count their per-cents by the paces they take;
The cry of the babe unheard of its mother
Though it lie on her breast, while she thinks of the other
Laid yesterday where it will not wake;
The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks
Held out in the smoke, like stars by day;
The gin-door's oath that hollowly chinks
Guilt upon grief and wrong upon hate;
The cabman's cry to get out of the way;
The dustman's call down the area-grate;
The young maid's jest, and the old wife's scold,
The haggling talk of the boys at a stall,
The fight in the street which is backed for gold,
The plea of the lawyers in Westminster Hall;
The drop on the stones of the blind man's staff
As he trades in his own grief's sacredness,
The brothel shriek, and the Newgate laugh,
The hum upon 'Change, and the organ's grinding,
(The grinder's face being nevertheless
Dry and vacant of even woe
While the children's hearts are leaping so
At the merry music's winding;)
The black-plumed funeral's creeping train,
Long and slow (and yet they will go
As fast as Life though it hurry and strain! )
Creeping the populous houses through
And nodding their plumes at either side,--
At many a house, where an infant, new
To the sunshiny world, has just struggled and cried,--
At many a house where sitteth a bride
Trying to-morrow's coronals
With a scarlet blush to-day:
Slowly creep the funerals,
As none should hear the noise and say
"The living, the living must go away
To multiply the dead. "
Hark! an upward shout is sent,
In grave strong joy from tower to steeple
The bells ring out,
The trumpets sound, the people shout,
The young queen goes to her Parliament.
She turneth round her large blue eyes
More bright with childish memories
Than royal hopes, upon the people;
On either side she bows her head
Lowly, with a queenly grace
And smile most trusting-innocent,
As if she smiled upon her mother;
The thousands press before each other
To bless her to her face;
And booms the deep majestic voice
Through trump and drum,--"May the queen rejoice
In the people's liberties! "

III.