No More Learning

Hob-and-nob with brother Death!

"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near:
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.

"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,
When the locks are crisp and curl'd;
Unto me my maudlin gall
And my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!
Mingle madness, mingle scorn!
Dregs of life, and lees of man:
Yet we will not die forlorn. "


5

The voice grew faint: there came a further change:
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss,
Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time".
[7] Another said: "The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame".
And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;
A little grain of conscience made him sour".
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope? "
To which an answer peal'd from that high land.
But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn. [8]


[Footnote 1: A reference to the famous passage in the 'Phoedrus' where
Plato compares the soul to a chariot drawn by the two-winged steeds.
]

Footnote 2: Imitated apparently from the dance in Shelley's 'Triumph of
Life':--

The wild dance maddens in the van; and those
. . .
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows.

They, tortur'd by their agonising pleasure,
Convuls'd, and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
. . .
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air.
As their feet twinkle, etc. ]


[Footnote 3: See footnote to last line. ]

[Footnote 4: All up to and including 1850 read:--

Every _minute_ dies a man,
Every _minute_ one is born.

Mr. Babbage, the famous mathematician, is said to have addressed the
following letter to Tennyson in reference to this couplet:--

"I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to
keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual
equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said
sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the
liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent
poem, the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected
as follows:--

Every moment dies a man,
And one and a sixteenth is born.

I may add that the exact figures are 1. 167, but something must, of
course, be conceded to the laws of metre.