No More Learning

And every morning brings such pleasure
Of sweet love-making, harmless sport:
Love that makes and finds its treasure;
Love, treasure without measure.

A sigh because the days are long!
Long, long these days that pass in sighing,
A burden saddens every song:
While time lags which should be flying,
We live who would be dying.




DEVOTIONAL PIECES.




AMOR MUNDI.


"O where are you going with your love-locks flowing,
On the west wind blowing along this valley track? "
"The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back. "

So they two went together in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.

"Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt? "
"Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt. "

"Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly? "--"A scaled and hooded worm. "
"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow? "
"Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term. "

"Turn again, O my sweetest,--turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track.
"
"Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downhill path is easy, but there's no turning back. "



A CHRISTMAS CAROL.


In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Throng'd the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped her Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,--
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.



BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.

B. C. 570.


Here, where I dwell, I waste to skin and bone;
The curse is come upon me, and I waste
In penal torment powerless to atone.
The curse is come on me, which makes no haste
And doth not tarry, crushing both the proud
Hard man and him the sinner double-faced.
Look not upon me, for my soul is bowed
Within me, as my body in this mire;
My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore bestead and cowed
As Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire,
As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal,
So we the elect ones perish in His ire.
Vainly we gird on sackcloth, vainly kneel
With famished faces toward Jerusalem:
His heart is shut against us not to feel,
His ears against our cry He shutteth them,
His hand He shorteneth that He will not save,
His law is loud against us to condemn:
And we, as unclean bodies in the grave
Inheriting corruption and the dark,
Are outcast from His presence which we crave.