No More Learning

Lo, face by face two spirits pace
Where the blissful willow waves above:
One saith: `Do me a friendly grace --'
(`Grace! ' quoth Love)

"`Read me two Dreams that linger long,
Dim as returns of old-time song
That flicker about the mind.
I dreamed (how deep in mortal sleep! )
I struck thee dead, then stood above,
With tears that none but dreamers weep;'
`Dreams,' quoth Love;

"`In dreams, again, I plucked a flower
That clung with pain and stung with power,
Yea, nettled me, body and mind. '
`'Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine;
No need nor seed of it here Above;
In dreams of hate true loves begin. '
`True,' quoth Love.

"`Now strange,' quoth Sense, and `Strange,' quoth Mind,
`We saw it, and yet 'tis hard to find,
-- But we saw it,' quoth Sense and Mind.
Stretched on the ground, beautiful-crowned
Of the piteous willow that wreathed above,
`But I cannot find where ye have found
Hell,' quoth Love. "

____
Baltimore, 1878-9.



IV. Tyranny.


"Spring-germs, spring-germs,
I charge you by your life, go back to death.
This glebe is sick, this wind is foul of breath.
Stay: feed the worms.

"Oh!
every clod
Is faint, and falters from the war of growth
And crumbles in a dreary dust of sloth,
Unploughed, untrod.

"What need, what need,
To hide with flowers the curse upon the hills,
Or sanctify the banks of sluggish rills
Where vapors breed?

"And -- if needs must --
Advance, O Summer-heats! upon the land,
And bake the bloody mould to shards and sand
And dust.

"Before your birth,
Burn up, O Roses! with your dainty flame.
Good Violets, sweet Violets, hide shame
Below the earth.

"Ye silent Mills,
Reject the bitter kindness of the moss.
O Farms! protest if any tree emboss
The barren hills.

"Young Trade is dead,
And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern
And folds his arms that find no bread to earn,
And bows his head.

"Spring-germs, spring-germs,
Albeit the towns have left you place to play,
I charge you, sport not. Winter owns to-day,
Stay: feed the worms. "

____
Prattville, Alabama, 1868.



V. Life and Song.