No More Learning

When I return to my cold home, you ask _25
Why I am not as I have ever been.
YOU spoil me for the task
Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene,--
Of wearing on my brow the idle mask
Of author, great or mean, _30
In the world's carnival. I sought
Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.

5.
Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot
With various flowers, and every one still said,
'She loves me--loves me not. ' _35
And if this meant a vision long since fled--
If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought--
If it meant,--but I dread
To speak what you may know too well:
Still there was truth in the sad oracle. _40

6.
The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;
No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,
When it no more would roam;
The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast
Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam, _45
And thus at length find rest:
Doubtless there is a place of peace
Where MY weak heart and all its throbs will cease.

7.
I asked her, yesterday, if she believed
That I had resolution. One who HAD _50
Would ne'er have thus relieved
His heart with words,--but what his judgement bade
Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.
These verses are too sad
To send to you, but that I know, _55
Happy yourself, you feel another's woe.

NOTES:
_10 Indifference, which once hurt me, is now grown Trelawny manuscript.
_18 Dear friends, dear friend Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition;
Dear gentle friend 1834, 1839, 1st edition.
_26 ever]lately Trelawny manuscript.
_28 in Trelawny manuscript; on 1834, editions 1839,
_43 When 1839, 2nd edition; Whence 1834, 1839, 1st edition.
_48 will 1839, 2nd edition; shall 1834, 1839, 1st edition.
_53 unrelieved Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd. edition;
unreprieved 1834, 1839, 1st edition.
_54 are]were Trelawny manuscript.

***


TO --.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair _5
For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

2.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not _10
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,--
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar _15
From the sphere of our sorrow?

***


TO --.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.
There is a Boscombe manuscript.