No More Learning

A swaying sweet and bitter,
A singing without melody. .
43

? Throbbing
THIS throbbing shows what we abandoned,
Which through the vacant chamber wells,
Wherein our joys, in parting, beckoned,
No longer hour nor pathway tells 1
How oft in sleep we wander, straying!
How shrill at every word it quells,
Resounding like those joys' last echoes I
How sorely every stone retells.
That we perceived ourselves erst only . . . .
How all around, it chokes and swells
When we approach the things they cherished.
Against it how the heart rebels.
--Since, chides and asks our solemn action,
For such an end what rage compels ? --
Yet silenced cannot be this throbbing
Which dolefulness alone dispels.
44

? Day Song
BY the waters that make faint moan,
Yonder where the poplar tree sways,
Sits a songful bird, whose quaint tone
T'wards us softly o'er the lea strays.
And the warbler's voice resounds clear :?
"Bloom is in the garden-close dead,
All within its season rounds fair,
See how yonder summit glows red.
Only memory leaves him prize-dreams,
Who to happier ones the way treads,
Golden glory from his eyes beams,
Which in flight he on the way sheds.
Lift thy tired head that fain bends,
Should a visage from the night rise,
And thus wait until my strain ends,
And thus tarry until the light dies. "
45

? Dream and Death
LUSTRE and fame! thus ariseth our sphere
Like heroes we banish both mountain and mere,
Young and great beams the spirit, unbound
On the fields, on the floods that surround.
O'er the way, a light breaks, a form flies,
And both rapture and grief swiftly rise,
The Supreme, muses, weeps, to bend were fain:
"Thou my weal, thou my star, thou my gain. "
Then a dream of great pomp rises o'er,
And it conquers the god that it bore,
Till a shout casts us down far beneath;
We so small, and so stript before death.
All these storm, tear and beat, blare and blast,
Till on the night-firmament at last,
Converged in a light-gem that glisteneth;
Lustre and fame, rapture and grief, dream and death.

? FROM
THE SEVENTH RING

?
? From "Tides
TROUBLED soul--thus didst thou ask--why art thou
mourning?
Is this then thy return for fate's good will?
Sickly soul--I said to thee--but now in mourning
This fate is wrong and makes me deathly ill.