No More Learning

Speak! Are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue
Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?
Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,
And I will be a friend and sister unto you. _3360

19.
'"Disguise it not--we have one human heart--
All mortal thoughts confess a common home:
Blush not for what may to thyself impart
Stains of inevitable crime: the doom
Is this, which has, or may, or must become _3365
Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoil
Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb--
Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil
Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.

20.
'"Disguise it not--ye blush for what ye hate, _3370
And Enmity is sister unto Shame;
Look on your mind--it is the book of fate--
Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name
Of misery--all are mirrors of the same;
But the dark fiend who with his iron pen _3375
Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame
Enduring there, would o'er the heads of men
Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.

21.
'"Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing
Of many names, all evil, some divine, _3380
Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;
Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine
Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine
To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside
It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine _3385
When Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied,
Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side.

22.
'"Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,
Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine own.
It is the dark idolatry of self, _3390
Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone,
Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;
Oh, vacant expiation! Be at rest. --
The past is Death's, the future is thine own;
And love and joy can make the foulest breast _3395
A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.

23.
'"Speak thou! whence come ye? "--A Youth made reply:
"Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deep
We sail;--thou readest well the misery
Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep _3400
Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep,
Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow;
Even from our childhood have we learned to steep
The bread of slavery in the tears of woe,
And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now. _3405

24.
'"Yes--I must speak--my secret should have perished
Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand
Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,
But that no human bosom can withstand
Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command _3410
Of thy keen eyes:--yes, we are wretched slaves,
Who from their wonted loves and native land
Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing waves
The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.

25.
'"We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest _3415
Among the daughters of those mountains lone,
We drag them there, where all things best and rarest
Are stained and trampled:--years have come and gone
Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known
No thought;--but now the eyes of one dear Maid _3420
On mine with light of mutual love have shone--
She is my life,--I am but as the shade
Of her,--a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.

26.
'"For she must perish in the Tyrant's hall--
Alas, alas! "--He ceased, and by the sail _3425
Sate cowering--but his sobs were heard by all,
And still before the ocean and the gale
The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail;
And, round me gathered with mute countenance,
The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale _3430
With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance
Met mine in restless awe--they stood as in a trance.

27.
'"Recede not!