No More Learning

_ Nay, gaze not backward through the gate!
God fills our heaven with God's own solitude
Till all the pavements glow:
His Godhead being no more subdued,
By itself, to glories low
Which seraphs can sustain.
What if thou, in gazing so,
Shouldst behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone--
Even that to which we dare to press
Nearest, for its gentleness--
Ay, his love!
How the deep ecstatic pain
Thy being's strength would capture!
Without language for the rapture,
Without music strong to come
And set the adoration free,
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be
Amid the general chorus dumb,
God-stricken to seraphic agony.
Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise
The life-fount whence his hand did gather
With solitary force
Our immortalities!
Straightway how thine own would wither,
Falter like a human breath,
And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source! --
My words have imaged dread
Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
And dropt thy wings in languishment:
Overclouding foot and face,
As if God's throne were eminent
Before thee, in the place.
Yet not--not so,
O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil
The supreme Will.
Not for obeisance but obedience,
Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence!
The voice said "Go! "

_Zerah. _ Beloved, I depart,
His will is as a spirit within my spirit,
A portion of the being I inherit.
His will is mine obedience.
I resemble
A flame all undefiled though it tremble;
I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!
O thou, who stronger art,
And standest ever near the Infinite,
Pale with the light of Light,
Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,
More feeble, more afraid;
And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
As close and gentle as the loving are,
That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.

_Ador. _ I am near thee and I love thee.
Were I loveless, from thee gone,
Love is round, beneath, above thee,
God, the omnipresent one.
Spread the wing and lift the brow!
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?