No More Learning

Why was I
To stand within the level of their hopes,
Because my hope was widow'd, like the cur
In the child's adage? Did I love Camilla?
Ye know that I did love her: to this present
My full-orb'd love hath waned not. Did I love her,
And could I look upon her tearful eyes?
Tears wept for me; for me--weep at my grief?
What had _she_ done to weep--let my heart
Break rather--whom the gentlest airs of heaven
Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness.
Her love did murder mine; what then? she deem'd
I wore a brother's mind: she call'd me brother:
She told me all her love: she shall not weep.

The brightness of a burning thought awhile
Battailing with the glooms of my dark will,
Moonlike emerged, lit up unto itself,
Upon the depths of an unfathom'd woe,
Reflex of action, starting up at once,
As men do from a vague and horrid dream,
And throwing by all consciousness of self,
In eager haste I shook him by the hand;
Then flinging myself down upon my knees
Even where the grass was warm where I had lain,
I pray'd aloud to God that he would hold
The hand of blessing over Lionel,
And her whom he would make his wedded wife,
Camilla! May their days be golden days,
And their long life a dream of linked love,
From which may rude Death never startle them,
But grow upon them like a glorious vision
Of unconceived and awful happiness,
Solemn but splendid, full of shapes and sounds,
Swallowing its precedent in victory.
Let them so love that men and boys may say,
Lo! how they love each other! till their love
Shall ripen to a proverb unto all,
Known when their faces are forgot in the land.
And as for me, Camilla, as for me,
Think not thy tears will make my name grow green,--
The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew.
The course of Hope is dried,--the life o' the plant--
They will but sicken the sick plant more.
Deem then I love thee but as brothers do,
So shalt thou love me still as sisters do;
Or if thou dream'st aught farther, dream but how
I could have loved thee, had there been none else
To love as lovers, loved again by thee.

Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spoke,
When I did see her weep so ruefully;
For sure my love should ne'er induce the front
And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments
Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans
Feed and envenom, as the milky blood
Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake.
Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts,
And batten on his poisons? Love forbid!
Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate,
And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love.
O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears
Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image,
The subject of thy power, be cold in her,
Yet, like cold snow, it melteth in the source
Of these sad tears, and feeds their downward flow.
So Love, arraign'd to judgment and to death,
Received unto himself a part of blame.
Being guiltless, as an innocent prisoner,
Who when the woful sentence hath been past,
And all the clearness of his fame hath gone
Beneath the shadow of the curse of men,
First falls asleep in swoon. Wherefrom awaked
And looking round upon his tearful friends,
Forthwith and in his agony conceives
A shameful sense as of a cleaving crime--
For whence without some guilt should such grief be?
So died that hour, and fell into the abysm
Of forms outworn, but not to be outworn,
Who never hail'd another worth the Life
That made it sensible. So died that hour,
Like odour wrapt into the winged wind
Borne into alien lands and far away.
There be some hearts so airy-fashioned,
That in the death of love, if e'er they loved,
On that sharp ridge of utmost doom ride highly
Above the perilous seas of change and chance;
Nay, more, holds out the lights of cheerfulness;
As the tall ship, that many a dreary year
Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea,
All through the lifelong hours of utter dark,
Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave.
For me all other Hopes did sway from that
Which hung the frailest: falling, they fell too,
Crush'd link on link into the beaten earth,
And Love did walk with banish'd Hope no more,
It was ill-done to part ye, Sisters fair;
Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss, and drank her whisper'd tales.
They said that Love would die when Hope was gone,
And Love mourned long, and sorrowed after Hope;
At last she sought out memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.

II

From that time forth I would not see her more,
But many weary moons I lived alone--
Alone, and in the heart of the great forest.
Sometimes upon the hills beside the sea
All day I watched the floating isles of shade,
And sometimes on the shore, upon the sands
Insensibly I drew her name, until
The meaning of the letters shot into
My brain: anon the wanton billow wash'd
Them over, till they faded like my love.