No More Learning

'Tis hard, ay, hard to fling aside
A love long cherished. Yet you must.
Be strong, prevail, and from the dust
A conqueror rise, whate'er betide.

Ye gods, who of your mercy give
Force to the fainting, let my life
Of honour win me rest from strife,
And from my blood the canker drive;
Ere yet from limb to limb it steal,
And in black darkness plunge my soul,
Oh, drive it hence and make me whole;
A caitiff wounds, a god may heal.

No more for answering love I sue,
No more that her untruth be true:
Purge but my heart, my strength renew
And doom me not my faith to rue.

D. A. SLATER.


_100_

OVER the mighty world's highway,
City by city, sea by sea,
Brother, thy brother comes to pay
Pitiful offerings unto thee.

I only ask to grace thy bier
With gifts that only give farewell,
To tell to ears that cannot hear
The things that it is vain to tell,

And, idly communing with dust,
To know thy presence still denied,
And ever mourn forever lost
A soul that never should have died.

Yet think not wholly vain to-day
This fashion that our fathers gave
That hither brings me, here to lay
Some gift of sorrow on thy grave.

Take, brother, gifts a brother's tears
Bedewed with sorrow as they fell,
And 'Greeting' to the end of years,
And to the end of years 'Farewell'.

H. W. G.
_101_

FRIEND, if the mute and shrouded dead
Are touched at all by tears,
By love long fled and friendship sped
And the unreturning years,

O then, to her that early died,
O doubt not, bridegroom, to thy bride
Thy love is sweet and sweeteneth
The very bitterness of death.

H. W. G.


_103_

SICK, Cornificius, is thy friend,
Sick to the heart: and sees no end
Of wretched thoughts that gathering fast
Threaten to wear him out at last.

And yet you never come and bring,
Though 'twere the least and easiest thing,
A comfort in that talk of thine.
You vex me. This to love of mine?

Prithee a little talk, for ease,
Full as the tears of sad Simonides!

LEIGH HUNT.


_110_

AVAUNT, ye vain bombastic crew,
Crickets that swill no Attic dew:
Good-bye, grammarians crass and narrow,
Selius, Tarquitius, and Varro:
A pedant tribe of fat-brained fools,
The tinkling cymbals of the schools!
Sextus, my friend of friends, good-bye,
With all our pretty company!
I'm sailing for the blissful shore,
Great Siro's high recondite lore,
That haven where my life shall be
From every tyrant passion free.
You too, sweet Muses mine, farewell,
Sweet muses mine, for truth to tell
Sweet were ye once, but now begone;
And yet, and yet, return anon,
And when I write, at whiles be seen
In visits shy and far between.

T. H.