No More Learning

60

'Then heavenly beauty could allay
As heavenly beauty stirred the strife:
By them a slave was worshipped more
Than is by us a wife. '

She laughed again, my sister laughed,
Made answer o'er the laboured cloth:
'I would rather be one of us
Than wife, or slave, or both. '

'Oh better then be slave or wife
Than fritter now blank life away: 70
Then night had holiness of night,
And day was sacred day.

'The princess laboured at her loom,
Mistress and handmaiden alike;
Beneath their needles grew the field
With warriors armed to strike.

'Or, look again, dim Dian's face
Gleamed perfect through the attendant night;
Were such not better than those holes
Amid that waste of white? 80

'A shame it is, our aimless life:
I rather from my heart would feed
From silver dish in gilded stall
With wheat and wine the steed--

'The faithful steed that bore my lord
In safety through the hostile land,
The faithful steed that arched his neck
To fondle with my hand. '

Her needle erred; a moment's pause,
A moment's patience, all was well. 90
Then she: 'But just suppose the horse,
Suppose the rider fell?

'Then captive in an alien house,
Hungering on exile's bitter bread,--
They happy, they who won the lot
Of sacrifice,' she said.

Speaking she faltered, while her look
Showed forth her passion like a glass:
With hand suspended, kindling eye,
Flushed cheek, how fair she was! 100

'Ah well, be those the days of dross;
This, if you will, the age of gold:
Yet had those days a spark of warmth,
While these are somewhat cold--

'Are somewhat mean and cold and slow,
Are stunted from heroic growth:
We gain but little when we prove
The worthlessness of both. '

'But life is in our hands,' she said:
'In our own hands for gain or loss: 110
Shall not the Sevenfold Sacred Fire
Suffice to purge our dross?

'Too short a century of dreams,
One day of work sufficient length:
Why should not you, why should not I
Attain heroic strength?

'Our life is given us as a blank;
Ourselves must make it blest or curst:
Who dooms me I shall only be
The second, not the first? 120

'Learn from old Homer, if you will,
Such wisdom as his books have said:
In one the acts of Ajax shine,
In one of Diomed.
'Honoured all heroes whose high deeds
Thro' life, till death, enlarge their span:
Only Achilles in his rage
And sloth is less than man. '

'Achilles only less than man?
He less than man who, half a god, 130
Discomfited all Greece with rest,
Cowed Ilion with a nod?

'He offered vengeance, lifelong grief
To one dear ghost, uncounted price:
Beasts, Trojans, adverse gods, himself,
Heaped up the sacrifice.

'Self-immolated to his friend,
Shrined in world's wonder, Homer's page,
Is this the man, the less than men,
Of this degenerate age? ' 140

'Gross from his acorns, tusky boar
Does memorable acts like his;
So for her snared offended young
Bleeds the swart lioness. '

But here she paused; our eyes had met,
And I was whitening with the jeer;
She rose: 'I went too far,' she said;
Spoke low: 'Forgive me, dear.

'To me our days seem pleasant days,
Our home a haven of pure content; 150
Forgive me if I said too much,
So much more than I meant.

'Homer, tho' greater than his gods,
With rough-hewn virtues was sufficed
And rough-hewn men: but what are such
To us who learn of Christ? '

The much-moved pathos of her voice,
Her almost tearful eyes, her cheek
Grown pale, confessed the strength of love
Which only made her speak: 160

For mild she was, of few soft words,
Most gentle, easy to be led,
Content to listen when I spoke
And reverence what I said;

I elder sister by six years;
Not half so glad, or wise, or good:
Her words rebuked my secret self
And shamed me where I stood.

She never guessed her words reproved
A silent envy nursed within, 170
A selfish, souring discontent
Pride-born, the devil's sin.

I smiled, half bitter, half in jest:
'The wisest man of all the wise
Left for his summary of life
"Vanity of vanities. "

'Beneath the sun there's nothing new:
Men flow, men ebb, mankind flows on:
If I am wearied of my life,
Why so was Solomon. 180

'Vanity of vanities he preached
Of all he found, of all he sought:
Vanity of vanities, the gist
Of all the words he taught.

'This in the wisdom of the world,
In Homer's page, in all, we find:
As the sea is not filled, so yearns
Man's universal mind.

'This Homer felt, who gave his men
With glory but a transient state: 190
His very Jove could not reverse
Irrevocable fate.