No More Learning

26.
A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,
The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,
Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew _1335
To my dry lips--what radiance did inform
Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form?
Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost
Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm
Within my teeth! --a whirlwind keen as frost _1340
Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.

27.
Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane
Arose, and bore me in its dark career
Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane
On the verge of formless space--it languished there, _1345
And dying, left a silence lone and drear,
More horrible than famine:--in the deep
The shape of an old man did then appear,
Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. _1350

28.
And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw
That column, and those corpses, and the moon,
And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw
My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon
Of senseless death would be accorded soon;-- _1355
When from that stony gloom a voice arose,
Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune
The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,
And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.

29.
He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled; _1360
As they were loosened by that Hermit old,
Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,
To answer those kind looks; he did enfold
His giant arms around me, to uphold
My wretched frame; my scorched limbs he wound _1365
In linen moist and balmy, and as cold
As dew to drooping leaves;--the chain, with sound
Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,

30.
As, lifting me, it fell! --What next I heard,
Were billows leaping on the harbour-bar, _1370
And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred
My hair;--I looked abroad, and saw a star
Shining beside a sail, and distant far
That mountain and its column, the known mark
Of those who in the wide deep wandering are, _1375
So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,
In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.

31.
For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow
I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape
Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow _1380
For my light head was hollowed in his lap,
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,
Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent
O'er me his aged face; as if to snap
Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent, _1385
And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.

32.
A soft and healing potion to my lips
At intervals he raised--now looked on high,
To mark if yet the starry giant dips
His zone in the dim sea--now cheeringly, _1390
Though he said little, did he speak to me.
'It is a friend beside thee--take good cheer,
Poor victim, thou art now at liberty! '
I joyed as those a human tone to hear,
Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year. _1395

33.
A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft
Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams;
Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft
The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams
Of morn descended on the ocean-streams, _1400
And still that aged man, so grand and mild,
Tended me, even as some sick mother seems
To hang in hope over a dying child,
Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.

34.
And then the night-wind steaming from the shore, _1405
Sent odours dying sweet across the sea,
And the swift boat the little waves which bore,
Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;
Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see
The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove, _1410
As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee
On sidelong wing, into a silent cove,
Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.


NOTES:
_1223 torches' editions 1818, 1839.
_1385 bent]meant cj. J. Nettleship.


CANTO 4.

1.
The old man took the oars, and soon the bark
Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone; _1415
It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark
With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;
Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,
And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,
Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown _1420
Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood
A changeling of man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.