No More Learning

SCENE II. --_The Mountain of the Jungfrau_. --
_Time, Morning_. --MANFRED _alone upon the cliffs. _

_Man_. The spirits I have raised abandon me,
The spells which I have studied baffle me,
The remedy I recked of tortured me
I lean no more on superhuman aid;
It hath no power upon the past, and for
The future, till the past be gulfed in darkness,
It is not of my search. --My Mother Earth! [119]
And thou fresh-breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
And thou, the bright Eye of the Universe, 10
That openest over all, and unto all
Art a delight--thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,
A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed
To rest for ever--wherefore do I pause?
I feel the impulse--yet I do not plunge; 20
I see the peril--yet do not recede;
And my brain reels--and yet my foot is firm:
There is a power upon me which withholds,
And makes it my fatality to live,--
If it be life to wear within myself
This barrenness of Spirit, and to be
My own Soul's sepulchre, for I have ceased
To justify my deeds unto myself--
The last infirmity of evil. Aye,
Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, 30
[_An Eagle passes. _
Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,
Well may'st thou swoop so near me--I should be
Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above,
With a pervading vision. --Beautiful!
How beautiful is all this visible world! [120]
How glorious in its action and itself!
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit 40
To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will,
Till our Mortality predominates,
And men are--what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,
[_The Shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard. _
The natural music of the mountain reed--
For here the patriarchal days are not
A pastoral fable--pipes in the liberal air, 50
Mixed with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;[121]
My soul would drink those echoes. Oh, that I were
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment[122]--born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!

_Enter from below a_ CHAMOIS HUNTER.

_Chamois Hunter_. Even so
This way the Chamois leapt: her nimble feet
Have baffled me; my gains to-day will scarce
Repay my break-neck travail. --What is here?
Who seems not of my trade, and yet hath reached 60
A height which none even of our mountaineers,
Save our best hunters, may attain: his garb
Is goodly, his mien manly, and his air
Proud as a free-born peasant's, at this distance:
I will approach him nearer.

_Man_. (_not perceiving the other_). To be thus--
Grey-haired with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless,[123]
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,
Which but supplies a feeling to Decay--
And to be thus, eternally but thus, 70
Having been otherwise! Now furrowed o'er
With wrinkles, ploughed by moments, not by years
And hours, all tortured into ages--hours
Which I outlive!