No More Learning

ON A CATARACT

FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE
[AFTER STOLBERG'S _UNSTERBLICHER JUNGLING_]


STROPHE

Unperishing youth!
Thou leapest from forth
The cell of thy hidden nativity;
Never mortal saw
The cradle of the strong one;
Never mortal heard
The gathering of his voices;
The deep-murmur'd charm of the son of the rock,
That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.
There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil
At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;
It embosoms the roses of dawn,
It entangles the shafts of the noon,
And into the bed of its stillness
The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,
That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven
May be born in a holy twilight!

ANTISTROPHE

The wild goat in awe
Looks up and beholds
Above thee the cliff inaccessible;--
Thou at once full-born
Madd'nest in thy joyance,
Whirlest, shatter'st, splitt'st,
Life invulnerable.

? 1799.




HYMN TO THE EARTH

[IMITATED FROM STOLBERG'S _HYMNE AN DIE EKDE_]


HEXAMETERS

Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,
Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I hymn thee!
Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float on your surges--
Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions.

Travelling the vale with mine eyes--green meadows and lake with green island,
Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in brightness,

Thrill'd with thy beauty and love in the wooded slope of the mountain,
Here, great mother, I lie, thy child, with his head on thy bosom!
Playful the spirits of noon, that rushing soft through thy tresses,
Green-hair'd goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or linger,
Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical murmurs.
Into my being thou murmurest joy, and tenderest sadness
Shedd'st thou, like dew, on my heart, till the joy and the heavenly sadness
Pour themselves forth from my heart in tears, and the hymn of thanksgiving.

Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,
Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the Sun, the rejoicer!
Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget not,
Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold thee!
Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation? )
Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamour'd!

Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess,
Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,
Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he woo'd thee and won thee!
Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of morning!
Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention:
Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!
Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith
Myriad myriads of lives teem'd forth from the mighty embracement.
Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impell'd by thousand-fold instincts,
Fill'd, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their channels;
Laugh'd on their shores the hoarse seas; the yearning ocean swell'd upward;
Young life low'd through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains,
Wander'd bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches.