No More Learning

And so, within, he burrowed deep,
And then upon a fragrant heap
He laid his unclean head.

The moon was swallowed by a cloud,
A nightingale sang sweet and loud
From the middle of a wood;
From its small body swelled a strain
Which flooded all the listening plain.
It trembled as it stood.

Upon his hay the Tramp awoke,
The golden fountain never broke,
The lovely sobbing strain.
The melody of that brown bird
Awoke a delicate, prisoned chord
Within his sodden brain.

The brain of him who lived remote
And dreamed strange things he never wrote
But hoarded in his mind.
He would not kill the dreams he loved
For sake of little things that moved
The passions of mankind.

Let the red torches toss and flare,
And all the long-stemmed trumpets blare,
Let brass beat loud on brass.
Let the Kings ride in victory,
Low comes the thought amidst the cry,
"These visions shall but pass. "

For, like reflections in a mirror,
Or empty bubbles on a river,
The striving world passed by.
What seemed to others worth the winning
Thro' strong desire or hate of sinning
Brought him no energy.

The thunder muttering on the hills,
The song of birds, the babbling rills,
The painted flowers and stars,
This pageantry of earth did seem
The parcel of a timeless dream.
He lived beyond the bars.

It was to him a vague mirage
Or memory of a storied page
With only that appeal;
But oftentimes a sound or sight
Would bring to him his own delight
More subtle than the real.

And with his sense of entity
Half lost, he raised a vacant eye
Into the empyrean.
And as he lay upon his back
The pealing centuries rolled back. . . .
He saw the blue AEgean.

And thus he dreamt: "My palace home
With minaret and marble dome
Upon the sapphire strait.
My garden full of nightingales,
One singing as the other fails
While evening groweth late.

"And from my watch-tower I behold
Beneath a sky of molten gold
My argosies return.
A homeward wind is in their sails,
Freighted are they with costly bales,
Vast fires behind them burn.

"I have a room with shining floors
And lofty roof and polished doors,
Wherein I love to dine
With two good friends at left and right,
Whose converse is my soul's delight
And glads my heart like wine.

"Or in my marble portico
We sit and watch the summer glow
And talk of love and death;
And when the amber twilight fails
We listen to the nightingales,
And evening holds her breath.

"Oh! Charicles and Charmides,
Much have I dreamt of hours like these,
My friends I never knew--
Whose voices and whose grave, sweet words
Were lovelier than the songs of birds,
And fresher than the dew.

"For Charicles has love and youth,
And all his words are sweet with truth,
Like a garden with the rain;
And Charmides is mild and wise,
But with his tear-washed, violet eyes
Yet can he smile again.

"Perhaps I knew you, ancient lords
Of nobler wit and finer chords--
But this I cannot tell;
For ever lovely things I sought
In some strange borderland of thought,
Content therein to dwell.

"For who could blame or who could praise
If one should choose to pass his days
In a phantasy of dreams,
And, finding thus his own ideal
In things dissevered from the real,
Be happier than he seems?