No More Learning

Now shake the glittering nimbus of thy hair,
And be God's witness that the elemental
New springs of life are gushing everywhere
To cleanse the watercourses, and prevent all
Concrete obstructions which infest the air!
That earth's alive, and gentle or ungentle
Motions within her, signify but growth! --
The ground swells greenest o'er the labouring moles.

Howe'er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth,
Young children, lifted high on parent souls,
Look round them with a smile upon the mouth,
And take for music every bell that tolls;
(WHO said we should be better if like these? )
But _we_ sit murmuring for the future though
Posterity is smiling on our knees,
Convicting us of folly. Let us go--
We will trust God. The blank interstices
Men take for ruins, He will build into
With pillared marbles rare, or knit across
With generous arches, till the fane's complete.
This world has no perdition, if some loss.

Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet!
The self-same cherub-faces which emboss
The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat.


FOOTNOTES:

[12] See the opening passage of the "Agamemnon" of AEschylus.

[13] Philostratus relates of Apollonius how he objected to the musical
instrument of Linus the Rhodian that it could not enrich or
beautify. The history of music in our day would satisfy the
philosopher on one point at least.




POEMS BEFORE CONGRESS


PREFACE.


These poems were written under the pressure of the events they
indicate, after a residence in Italy of so many years that the present
triumph of great principles is heightened to the writer's feelings by
the disastrous issue of the last movement, witnessed from "Casa Guidi
Windows" in 1849.
Yet, if the verses should appear to English readers
too pungently rendered to admit of a patriotic respect to the English
sense of things, I will not excuse myself on such grounds, nor on the
ground of my attachment to the Italian people and my admiration of
their heroic constancy and union. What I have written has simply been
written because I love truth and justice _quand meme_,--"more than
Plato" and Plato's country, more than Dante and Dante's country, more
even than Shakespeare and Shakespeare's country.

And if patriotism means the flattery of one's nation in every case,
then the patriot, take it as you please, is merely the courtier which
I am not, though I have written "Napoleon III. in Italy. " It is time
to limit the significance of certain terms, or to enlarge the
significance of certain things. Nationality is excellent in its
place; and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will
develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and
uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we
both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest
species of corruption reserved for the most noble organizations. For
instance,--non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a
high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean, passing
by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves,--or
Phariseeism would recover it from Christianity. Freedom itself is
virtue, as well as privilege; but freedom of the seas does not mean
piracy, nor freedom of the land, brigandage; nor freedom of the
senate, freedom to cudgel a dissident member; nor freedom of the
press, freedom to calumniate and lie. So, if patriotism be a virtue
indeed, it cannot mean an exclusive devotion to our country's
interests,--for that is only another form of devotion to personal
interests, family interests, or provincial interests, all of which,
if not driven past themselves, are vulgar and immoral objects. Let
us put away the Little Peddlingtonism unworthy of a great nation, and
too prevalent among us. If the man who does not look beyond this
natural life is of a somewhat narrow order, what must be the man who
does not look beyond his own frontier or his own sea?

I confess that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall
arise with a heart too large for England; having courage in the face
of his countrymen to assert of some suggested policy,--"This is good
for your trade; this is necessary for your domination: but it will vex
a people hard by; it will hurt a people farther off; it will profit
nothing to the general humanity: therefore, away with it! --it is not
for you or for me. " When a British minister dares speak so, and when a
British public applauds him speaking, then shall the nation be
glorious, and her praise, instead of exploding from within, from loud
civic mouths, come to her from without, as all worthy praise must,
from the alliances she has fostered and the populations she has
saved.

And poets who write of the events of that time shall not need to
justify themselves in prefaces for ever so little jarring of the
national sentiment imputable to their rhymes.