No More Learning

This is the dream of the Dreamer
With the grave thought-sunken eyes,
Which he dreamed between sleeping and waking,
Between the night and the making
Of dawn . . . and he dreamed in this wise:

To the gate of the dawn came a chariot
Which four black stallions were drawing,
And a spirit charioteer,
With the burning eyes of a seer,
Held them impatiently pawing.

He mounted the floor of the chariot,
And the Spirit drew together
His reins, his strong grip tight'ning,
And his thong flashed out like a lightning,
And the horses rushed up to aether.

The Dreamer was caught into space
With a pang as of ending or birth,
And lo! clouds builded above him,
And beneath him soundless and moving
The sea of his own little earth.

They clove the walls of the clouds,
And snorted each coal black stallion
Nursed by the Spirit, whose hair
Streamed out like a banner, and bare
In the night was the moon--a medallion

And then an ice-sheathed corpse
With ancient glaciers and snouted
Craters of fires extinct,
Chain on chain of them linked.
And the Lord of the Chariot shouted

And shook out his hissing lash
Over the backs of the four
Till they whirled up faster and faster,
Till the sun became vaster and vaster,
And its flames leapt out with a roar

Of mountains, subsident, resurging,
Innumerable, ceaseless of action,
Years and years into space. . . .
And the Dreamer covered his face,
As he rode, in his stupefaction.

They passed with a dip and a swerve,
As a swallow skims the downs,
Far up into the height,
And the stars looked down from the night
Like the lights of distant towns.

Swift is the lonely thought
Of a sage, a mountain-dweller,
But swifter far was their rush
Thro' the awful cold and the hush
Of the spaces interstellar.
They heard the approaching thunder,
And saw the glare of a comet
Holding its destined way
To an undiscovered day,
And its tresses streamed out from it.

They broke thro' other systems,
By huger alien spheres,
Each in its orbit travelling,
The timeless skeins unravelling
Of a law with no count of years

And came at last to a planet,
Girt in a gleaming ring
Of cloud and vapour and mist,
Which the light of four moons kissed
To a wonderful milk-white thing.

Then the Spirit reined in his stallions,
And pointed in exultation
And turned his orbed eyes,
Which burned with a wild surmise
And a dreadful penetration,

On the Dreamer, who followed, and lo!
The Heavens had changed their stations,
And their voids were with unknown
And greater galaxies sown
And altered constellations.

And, beyond, a scatter of crystals,
And, beyond, bright motes in a beam,
And, beyond, while the Spirit probed him
To the soul in the flesh that robed him,
An uncountable shimmering stream.

He saw these worlds all marshalled,
And their ways all governed for ever;
And he felt the sight of his soul
Shrivel up like a fire-licked scroll
In his insupportable terror.

Then the Spirit pointed again,
And wheeled the might of his horses
And shouted . . . and down they fell,
As a pebble drops in a well,
Thro' the worlds and the roar of their courses.

And the Dreamer looked, and behold!
In a point to aeons withdrawn. . . .
A scarce visible speck of light,
His own sun like a mite,
And the blur of his own little dawn.