No More Learning

Were punished by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal-girded shrine,
Worshipped at holy distance, and around 130
Hallowed and meekly kissed the saintly ground;
Not for thou wert a Princess, but that Love
Had robed thee with a glory, and arrayed
Thy lineaments in beauty that dismayed--
Oh! not dismayed--but awed, like One above!
And in that sweet severity[184] there was
A something which all softness did surpass--
I know not how--thy Genius mastered mine--
My Star stood still before thee:--if it were
Presumptuous thus to love without design, 140
That sad fatality hath cost me dear;
But thou art dearest still, and I should be
Fit for this cell, which wrongs me--but for _thee_.
The very love which locked me to my chain
Hath lightened half its weight; and for the rest,
Though heavy, lent me vigour to sustain,
And look to thee with undivided breast,
And foil the ingenuity of Pain.

VI.

It is no marvel--from my very birth
My soul was drunk with Love,--which did pervade 150
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth:
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a Paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dreamed uncounted hours,
Though I was chid for wandering; and the Wise
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said
Of such materials wretched men were made,
And such a truant boy would end in woe, 160
And that the only lesson was a blow;[185]--
And then they smote me, and I did not weep,
But cursed them in my heart, and to my haunt
Returned and wept alone, and dreamed again
The visions which arise without a sleep.
And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought--and that was thee; 170
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorbed in thine;--the world was past away;--
_Thou_ didst annihilate the earth to me!


VII.

I loved all Solitude--but little thought
To spend I know not what of life, remote
From all communion with existence, save
The maniac and his tyrant;--had I been
Their fellow, many years ere this had seen
My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave. [bh]
But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave? 180
Perchance in such a cell we suffer more
Than the wrecked sailor on his desert shore;
The world is all before him--_mine_ is _here_,
Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier.
What though _he_ perish, he may lift his eye,
And with a dying glance upbraid the sky;
I will not raise my own in such reproof,
Although 'tis clouded by my dungeon roof.

VIII.

Yet do I feel at times my mind decline,[186]
But with a sense of its decay: I see 190
Unwonted lights along my prison shine,
And a strange Demon,[187] who is vexing me
With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below
The feeling of the healthful and the free;
But much to One, who long hath suffered so,
Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place,
And all that may be borne, or can debase.
I thought mine enemies had been but Man,
But Spirits may be leagued with them--all Earth
Abandons--Heaven forgets me;--in the dearth 200
Of such defence the Powers of Evil can--
It may be--tempt me further,--and prevail
Against the outworn creature they assail.
Why in this furnace is my spirit proved,
Like steel in tempering fire? because I loved?
Because I loved what not to love, and see,
Was more or less than mortal, and than me.

IX.

I once was quick in feeling--that is o'er;--
My scars are callous, or I should have dashed
My brain against these bars, as the sun flashed 210
In mockery through them;--- If I bear and bore
The much I have recounted, and the more
Which hath no words,--'t is that I would not die
And sanction with self-slaughter the dull lie
Which snared me here, and with the brand of shame
Stamp Madness deep into my memory,
And woo Compassion to a blighted name,
Sealing the sentence which my foes proclaim.
No--it shall be immortal! --and I make
A future temple of my present cell, 220
Which nations yet shall visit for my sake. [bi]
While thou, Ferrara! when no longer dwell
The ducal chiefs within thee, shall fall down,
And crumbling piecemeal view thy hearthless halls,
A Poet's wreath shall be thine only crown,--
A Poet's dungeon thy most far renown,
While strangers wonder o'er thy unpeopled walls!
And thou, Leonora! --thou--who wert ashamed
That such as I could love--who blushed to hear
To less than monarchs that thou couldst be dear, 230
Go! tell thy brother, that my heart, untamed
By grief--years--weariness--and it may be
A taint of that he would impute to me--
From long infection of a den like this,
Where the mind rots congenial with the abyss,--
Adores thee still;--and add--that when the towers
And battlements which guard his joyous hours
Of banquet, dance, and revel, are forgot,
Or left untended in a dull repose,
This--this--shall be a consecrated spot! 240
But _Thou_--when all that Birth and Beauty throws
Of magic round thee is extinct--shalt have
One half the laurel which o'ershades my grave. [188]
No power in death can tear our names apart,
As none in life could rend thee from my heart. [bj]
Yes, Leonora!