No More Learning

By night or day blow foul or fair,
Ne'er will the best of all your train
Play with the locks of his white hair,
Or stand between his knees again. 15

Here did he sit confined for hours;
But he could see the woods and plains,
Could hear the wind and mark the showers
Come streaming down the streaming panes.
Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound 20
He rests a prisoner of the ground.
He loved the breathing air,
He loved the sun, but if it rise
Or set, to him where now he lies,
Brings not a moment's care. 25

Alas! what idle words; but take
The Dirge which for our Master's sake
And yours, love prompted me to make.
The rhymes so homely in attire
With learned ears may ill agree, 30
But chanted by your Orphan Quire
Will make a touching melody.


DIRGE

Mourn, Shepherd, near thy old grey stone;
Thou Angler, by the silent flood;
And mourn when thou art all alone, 35
Thou Woodman, in the distant wood!

Thou one blind Sailor, rich in joy
Though blind, thy tunes in sadness hum;
And mourn, thou poor half-witted Boy!
Born deaf, and living deaf and dumb. 40

Thou drooping sick Man, bless the Guide
Who checked or turned thy headstrong youth,
As he before had sanctified
Thy infancy with heavenly truth.

Ye Striplings, light of heart and gay, 45
Bold settlers on some foreign shore,
Give, when your thoughts are turned this way,
A sigh to him whom we deplore.

For us who here in funeral strain
With one accord our voices raise, 50
Let sorrow overcharged with pain
Be lost in thankfulness and praise.

And when our hearts shall feel a sting
From ill we meet or good we miss,
May touches of his memory bring 55
Fond healing, like a mother's kiss.


BY THE SIDE OF THE GRAVE SOME YEARS AFTER

Long time his pulse hath ceased to beat;
But benefits, his gift, we trace--
Expressed in every eye we meet
Round this dear Vale, his native place.
60

To stately Hall and Cottage rude
Flowed from his life what still they hold,
Light pleasures, every day, renewed;
And blessings half a century old.

Oh true of heart, of spirit gay, 65
Thy faults, where not already gone
From memory, prolong their stay
For charity's sweet sake alone.

Such solace find we for our loss;
And what beyond this thought we crave 70
Comes in the promise from the Cross,
Shining upon thy happy grave.



To this poem, when first published in the "Poems of Early and Late
Years" (1842), Wordsworth appended the note, "See, upon the subject of
the three foregoing pieces, 'The Fountain' [p. 91], etc. etc. in the
fifth volume of the Author's Poems. " He thus connects it with the poems
referring to Matthew in such a way that it may be said to belong to that
series; and, while he assigned it to the year 1798, both in the edition
of 1845, and in that of 1849-50, it is quite possible that it was
written in 1799. "The village school" was the Grammar School of
Hawkshead, where Wordsworth spent his boyhood; and the schoolmaster was
the Rev. William Taylor, M. A. , Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who was the
third of the four masters who taught in it during Wordsworth's residence
there. He was master from 1782 to 1786. Just before his death he sent
for the upper boys of the school (amongst whom was Wordsworth), and
calling them into his room, took leave of them with a solemn blessing.
This farewell doubtless suggested the lines:

'the blessing which to you
Our common Friend and Father sent. '

Mr.