No More Learning

A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name "the music of the sphere. "
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
"Silence"--which is the merest word of all.
All Nature speaks, and ev'n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from visionary wings--
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky!

**"What tho' in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Link'd to a little system, and one sun--
Where all my love is folly and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath--
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path? )
What tho' in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of Time grow dimmer as they run,

* Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Der Phantasie. --_Goethe_.

** Sightless--too small to be seen--_Legge_.

Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro' the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky--
*Apart--like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle--and so be
To ev'ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man! "

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve! --on Earth we plight
Our faith to one love--and one moon adore--
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o'er sheeny mountain and dim plain
**Her way--but left not yet her Therasaean reign.
* I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fire-flies;
--they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common
centre, into innumerable radii.

** Therasaea, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca,
which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of
astonished mariners.


Part II.

HIGH on a mountain of enamell'd head--
Such as the drowsy shepherd on his bed
Of giant pasturage lying at his ease,
Raising his heavy eyelid, starts and sees
With many a mutter'd "hope to be forgiven"
What time the moon is quadrated in Heaven--
Of rosy head, that towering far away
Into the sunlit ether, caught the ray
Of sunken suns at eve--at noon of night,
While the moon danc'd with the fair stranger light--
Uprear'd upon such height arose a pile
Of gorgeous columns on th' unburthen'd air,
Flashing from Parian marble that twin smile
Far down upon the wave that sparkled there,
And nursled the young mountain in its lair.
*Of molten stars their pavement, such as fall
Thro' the ebon air, besilvering the pall
Of their own dissolution, while they die--
Adorning then the dwellings of the sky.
A dome, by linked light from Heaven let down,
Sat gently on these columns as a crown--
A window of one circular diamond, there,
Look'd out above into the purple air,

* Some star which, from the ruin'd roof Of shak'd Olympus,
by mischance, did fall. --_Milton. _

And rays from God shot down that meteor chain
And hallow'd all the beauty twice again,
Save when, between th' Empyrean and that ring,
Some eager spirit flapp'd his dusky wing.
But on the pillars Seraph eyes have seen
The dimness of this world: that greyish green
That Nature loves the best for Beauty's grave
Lurk'd in each cornice, round each architrave--
And every sculptur'd cherub thereabout
That from his marble dwelling peered out
Seem'd earthly in the shadow of his niche--
Achaian statues in a world so rich?
*Friezes from Tadmor and Persepolis--
From Balbec, and the stilly, clear abyss
**Of beautiful Gomorrah! O, the wave
Is now upon thee--but too late to save!

Sound loves to revel in a summer night:
Witness the murmur of the grey twilight

* Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, "Je connois
bien l'admiration qu'inspirent ces ruines--mais un palais
erige au pied d'une chaine des rochers sterils--peut il
etre un chef d'? vure des arts! " [_Voila les arguments de M.
Voltaire_. ]

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