No More Learning

Then he looked round: he was alone.
He lay before the breaking sun,
As Jacob at the Bethel stone.

And thought's entangled skein being wound,
He knew the moorland of his swound,
And the pale pools that smeared the ground;

The far wood-pines like offing ships;
The fourth pool's yew anear him drips,
_World's cruelty_ attaints his lips,

And still he tastes it, bitter still;
Through all that glorious possible
He had the sight of present ill.

Yet rising calmly up and slowly
With such a cheer as scorneth folly,
A mild delightsome melancholy,

He journeyed homeward through the wood
And prayed along the solitude
Betwixt the pines, "O God, my God! "

The golden morning's open flowings
Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings,
In metric chant of blessed poems.

And passing homeward through the wood,
He prayed along the solitude,
"THOU, Poet-God, art great and good!

"And though we must have, and have had
Right reason to be earthly sad,
THOU, Poet-God, art great and glad! "


CONCLUSION.

Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart:

And I was 'ware of walking down
That same green forest where had gone
The poet-pilgrim. One by one

I traced his footsteps. From the east
A red and tender radiance pressed
Through the near trees, until I guessed

The sun behind shone full and round;
While up the leafiness profound
A wind scarce old enough for sound

Stood ready to blow on me when
I turned that way, and now and then
The birds sang and brake off again

To shake their pretty feathers dry
Of the dew sliding droppingly
From the leaf-edges and apply

Back to their song: 'twixt dew and bird
So sweet a silence ministered,
God seemed to use it for a word,

Yet morning souls did leap and run
In all things, as the least had won
A joyous insight of the sun,

And no one looking round the wood
Could help confessing as he stood,
_This Poet-God is glad and good. _

But hark! a distant sound that grows,
A heaving, sinking of the boughs,
A rustling murmur, not of those,

A breezy noise which is not breeze!
And white-clad children by degrees
Steal out in troops among the trees,

Fair little children morning-bright,
With faces grave yet soft to sight,
Expressive of restrained delight.

Some plucked the palm-boughs within reach,
And others leapt up high to catch
The upper boughs and shake from each

A rain of dew till, wetted so,
The child who held the branch let go
And it swang backward with a flow

Of faster drippings.
Then I knew
The children laughed; but the laugh flew
From its own chirrup as might do

A frightened song-bird; and a child
Who seemed the chief said very mild,
"Hush! keep this morning undefiled. "

His eyes rebuked them from calm spheres,
His soul upon his brow appears
In waiting for more holy years.

I called the child to me, and said,
"What are your palms for? " "To be spread,"
He answered, "on a poet dead.

"The poet died last month, and now
The world which had been somewhat slow
In honouring his living brow,

"Commands the palms; they must be strown
On his new marble very soon,
In a procession of the town. "

I sighed and said, "Did he foresee
Any such honour? " "Verily
I cannot tell you," answered he.

"But this I know, I fain would lay
My own head down, another day,
As _he_ did,--with the fame away.

"A lily, a friend's hand had plucked,
Lay by his death-bed, which he looked
As deep down as a bee had sucked,

"Then, turning to the lattice, gazed
O'er hill and river and upraised
His eyes illumined and amazed

"With the world's beauty, up to God,
Re-offering on their iris broad
The images of things bestowed

"By the chief Poet. 'God! ' he cried,
'Be praised for anguish which has tried,
For beauty which has satisfied:

"'For this world's presence half within
And half without me--thought and scene--
This sense of Being and Having Been.

"'I thank Thee that my soul hath room
For Thy grand world: both guests may come--
Beauty, to soul--Body, to tomb.

"'I am content to be so weak:
Put strength into the words I speak,
And I am strong in what I seek.

"'I am content to be so bare
Before the archers, everywhere
My wounds being stroked by heavenly air.

"'I laid my soul before Thy feet
That images of fair and sweet
Should walk to other men on it.