No More Learning

Well-beloved, what fearest thou?

_Zerah. _ I fear, I fear--

_Ador. _ What fear?

_Zerah. _ The fear of earth.

_Ador. _ Of earth, the God-created and God-praised
In the hour of birth?
Where every night the moon in light
Doth lead the waters silver-faced?
Where every day the sun doth lay
A rapture to the heart of all
The leafy and reeded pastoral,
As if the joyous shout which burst
From angel lips to see him first,
Had left a silent echo in his ray?

_Zerah. _ Of earth--the God-created and God-curst,
Where man is, and the thorn:
Where sun and moon have borne
No light to souls forlorn:
Where Eden's tree of life no more uprears
Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead
The yew-tree bows its melancholy head
And all the undergrasses kills and seres.

_Ador. _ Of earth the weak,
Made and unmade?
Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?
Where, having won the profit which they seek,
They lie beside the sceptre and the gold
With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,
And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?

_Zerah. _ Of earth the bold,
Where the blind matter wrings
An awful potence out of impotence,
Bowing the spiritual things
To the things of sense.
Where the human will replies
With ay and no,
Because the human pulse is quick or slow.
Where Love succumbs to Change,
With only his own memories, for revenge.
And the fearful mystery--

_Ador. _ called Death?

_Zerah. _ Nay, death is fearful,--but who saith
"To die," is comprehensible.
What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,
Though the utterance be not for thee,
Lest it blanch thy lips from glory--
Ay! the cursed thing that moved
A shadow of ill, long time ago,
Across our heaven's own shining floor,
And when it vanished, some who were
On thrones of holy empire there,
Did reign--were seen--were--never more.
Come nearer, O beloved!

_Ador. _ I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee
Ever to this earth?

_Zerah.