No More Learning

See Mr. C. D.
Locock's "Examination", etc. , 1903, page 25. ]

1.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings. _5
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass, _10
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

2.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing _15
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, _20
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

3.
I sang of the dancing stars, _25
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven--and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,--
And then I changed my pipings,--
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus _30
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, _35
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
NOTE:
_5, _12 Listening to]Listening B.

***


THE QUESTION.

[Published by Leigh Hunt (with the signature Sigma) in "The Literary
Pocket-Book", 1822. Reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824. Copies exist in the Harvard manuscript book, amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts, and amongst Ollier manuscripts. ]

1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay _5
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, _10
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets--
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth--
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears, _15
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

3.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day; _20
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

4.
And nearer to the river's trembling edge _25
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white.
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; _30
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

5.