No More Learning

I tremble lest my humble prayer
You with stern countenance declare
The artifice of villany--
I hear your harsh, reproachful cry.
If ye but knew how dreadful 'tis
To bear love's parching agonies--
To burn, yet reason keep awake
The fever of the blood to slake--
A passionate desire to bend
And, sobbing at your feet, to blend
Entreaties, woes and prayers, confess
All that the heart would fain express--
Yet with a feigned frigidity
To arm the tongue and e'en the eye,
To be in conversation clear
And happy unto you appear.

So be it! But internal strife
I cannot longer wage concealed.
The die is cast! Thine is my life!
Into thy hands my fate I yield!

XXXII

No answer! He another sent.
Epistle second, note the third,
Remained unnoticed. Once he went
To an assembly--she appeared
Just as he entered. How severe!
She will not see, she will not hear.
Alas! she is as hard, behold,
And frosty as a Twelfth Night cold.
Oh, how her lips compressed restrain
The indignation of her heart!
A sidelong look doth Eugene dart:
Where, where, remorse, compassion, pain?
Where, where, the trace of tears? None, none!
Upon her brow sits wrath alone--

XXXIII

And it may be a secret dread
Lest the world or her lord divine
A certain little escapade
Well known unto Oneguine mine.
'Tis hopeless! Homeward doth he flee
Cursing his own stupidity,
And brooding o'er the ills he bore,
Society renounced once more.
Then in the silent cabinet
He in imagination saw
The time when Melancholy's claw
'Mid worldly pleasures chased him yet,
Caught him and by the collar took
And shut him in a lonely nook.

XXXIV

He read as vainly as before,
perusing Gibbon and Rousseau,
Manzoni, Herder and Chamfort,(85)
Madame de Stael, Bichat, Tissot:
He read the unbelieving Bayle,
Also the works of Fontenelle,
Some Russian authors he perused--
Nought in the universe refused:
Nor almanacs nor newspapers,
Which lessons unto us repeat,
Wherein I castigation get;
And where a madrigal occurs
Writ in my honour now and then--
_E sempre bene_, gentlemen!

[Note 85: Owing to the unstable nature of fame the names of some
of the above literary worthies necessitate reference at this
period in the nineteenth century.

Johann Gottfried von Herder, b. 1744, d. 1803, a German
philosopher, philanthropist and author, was the personal friend
of Goethe and held the poet of court chaplain at Weimar. His chief
work is entitled, "Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of
Mankind," in 4 vols.

Sebastien Roch Nicholas Chamfort, b. 1741, d.