No More Learning

IMITATIONS, ETC.


SAPPHIC FRAGMENT


"Thou shalt be--Nothing. "--OMAR KHAYYAM.

"Tombless, with no remembrance. "--W. SHAKESPEARE.

DEAD shalt thou lie; and nought
Be told of thee or thought,
For thou hast plucked not of the Muses' tree:
And even in Hades' halls
Amidst thy fellow-thralls
No friendly shade thy shade shall company!



CATULLUS: XXXI
(After passing Sirmione, April 1887. )


SIRMIO, thou dearest dear of strands
That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,
With what high joy from stranger lands
Doth thy old friend set foot on thee!
Yea, barely seems it true to me
That no Bithynia holds me now,
But calmly and assuringly
Around me stretchest homely Thou.

Is there a scene more sweet than when
Our clinging cares are undercast,
And, worn by alien moils and men,
The long untrodden sill repassed,
We press the pined for couch at last,
And find a full repayment there?
Then hail, sweet Sirmio; thou that wast,
And art, mine own unrivalled Fair!



AFTER SCHILLER


KNIGHT, a true sister-love
This heart retains;
Ask me no other love,
That way lie pains!

Calm must I view thee come,
Calm see thee go;
Tale-telling tears of thine
I must not know!



SONG FROM HEINE


I SCANNED her picture dreaming,
Till each dear line and hue
Was imaged, to my seeming,
As if it lived anew.
Her lips began to borrow
Their former wondrous smile;
Her fair eyes, faint with sorrow,
Grew sparkling as erstwhile.

Such tears as often ran not
Ran then, my love, for thee;
And O, believe I cannot
That thou are lost to me!



FROM VICTOR HUGO


CHILD, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
For a glance from you!

Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs,
Angels, the demons abject under me,
Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs,
Time, space, all would I give--aye, upper spheres,
For a kiss from thee!



CARDINAL BEMBO'S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL


HERE'S one in whom Nature feared--faint at such vying--
Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.




RETROSPECT


"I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES"


I

I HAVE lived with shades so long,
And talked to them so oft,
Since forth from cot and croft
I went mankind among,
That sometimes they
In their dim style
Will pause awhile
To hear my say;

II

And take me by the hand,
And lead me through their rooms
In the To-be, where Dooms
Half-wove and shapeless stand:
And show from there
The dwindled dust
And rot and rust
Of things that were.

III

"Now turn," spake they to me
One day: "Look whence we came,
And signify his name
Who gazes thence at thee. "--
--"Nor name nor race
Know I, or can,"
I said, "Of man
So commonplace.

IV

"He moves me not at all;
I note no ray or jot
Of rareness in his lot,
Or star exceptional.
Into the dim
Dead throngs around
He'll sink, nor sound
Be left of him. "

V

"Yet," said they, "his frail speech,
Hath accents pitched like thine--
Thy mould and his define
A likeness each to each--
But go! Deep pain
Alas, would be
His name to thee,
And told in vain! "

_Feb. _ 2, 1899.



MEMORY AND I


"O MEMORY, where is now my youth,
Who used to say that life was truth? "

"I saw him in a crumbled cot
Beneath a tottering tree;
That he as phantom lingers there
Is only known to me.