No More Learning

Where are the fair white maids
With flower faces and carriage
Straight as new-smithied blades,
Ripe, ready for marriage?
Now all are withered and grey,
Their beauty has passed away,
Ah! madness--
They are bent like hoops with sadness
And the world's badness.

Our voices are hoarse and drear,
As we sit and mumble together,
We have no good tidings to hear
We had sooner have never
(So we grumble together) been born,
That are so sick and forlorn;
Just shadows--
But once bright fishers of shallows,
Swift hunters of meadows.

We are the old, old men,
We have seen and endured much trouble;
It has turned us children again,
And bent us double.
Now we sit like a circle of stones,
And hear in each others' moans
Ill token.
For our sweetest thoughts were broken
Or else unspoken.




The Song of Snorro.


"Oh! who can drink at the world's brink,
Or reach the twilight star?
It's a long sail where the winds wail,
And the great waters are.

"Or who can say at the parting day
That he will see once more
His children's faces in happy places,
His true wife at the door? "

Snorro the Viking, his thigh striking,
Laughed in his big red beard.
"Some are bound by sight and sound.
While some have wished and feared.
"Their days dream as a droning stream
Or moonlight in a wood.
Now who can sate his love or hate,
And the tumult of his blood?

"Then cast the die for the open sky
When the great sun beats abroad,
For the foam-fleck and the narrow deck,
The life of oar and sword.

"Life and limb for the wind's hymn,
And all the fears that be,
The ghost-races with ghastly faces,
The phantoms of the sea.

"Mine is the morrow," shouted Snorro,
"I longed and have not feared. "
And his great laughter followed after
And rumbled in his beard.




The Island.


Once (was it long ago, dear?
Oh! hark to the sighing seas. )
We sailed to a wonderful Island
In the golden Antipodes,
Where the waves wore an azure mantle,
The winds were ever at rest,
For we'd left the Old World behind us
A thousand leagues to the West.

We came to that wonderful Island;
Girt by a ring of foam
It lay in the sea like a jewel
Under an azure dome.
The cliffs were all gold in the sunlight,
The strand was a floor of gold,
So we knew we'd come to the Island
We'd read of in tales of old.

Was it long we stayed in our Island?
(Dear, I can never say)
I know we walked on the mountains
Which looked far over the bay.
I know that we laughed for pleasure
(Were we wise or a couple of fools?