No More Learning

"On the world and fate reflecting,
Yawning I had fallen asleep,
When I dreamed that I was lying
Underneath a lofty tree.

"From the tree's o'erspreading branches
Dribbled down transparent honey.
Joyous blinking, up above me
Seven little bears I noticed.

"Tender, graceful little creatures,
Rosy coloured were their fur coats,
As they clambered; from their shoulders
Just like silk two wings were sprouting.

"And with soft and supernatural
Flute-like voices they were singing!
While thus singing, icy coldness
Crept throughout my skin, and flame-like

"From my skin my soul departed;
Soared in brightness up to heaven. "
Thus in tender words and falt'ring
Grunted Atta Troll. His ears then

Pricked themselves and strangely worked,
And from his repose he started,
Trembling, and with rapture bellowing,
"Children, do ye hear those sounds?

"Is it not the voice melodious
Of your mother? Oh, I know it,
'Tis the growling of my Mumma!
Mumma! Yes, my own black Mumma! "

Atta Troll, whilst these words utt'ring,
Like a madman headlong bounded
From the cavern to destruction!
Ah! he rushed upon his doom!
In the vale of Ronceval,
On the very spot where whilom
Charlemagne's peerless nephew
Gasped away his fleeting spirit,

There fell also Atta Troll,
Fell through treason, like the other,
Whom the traitor, knighthood's Judas,
Ganelon of Mainz, betrayed.


XI

Four gigantic men in triumph
Brought along the slaughtered Bear.
Upright sat he in an armchair,
Like a patient at the hot-wells.

That same day soon after skinning
Atta Troll, they up to auction
Put the skin. For just a hundred
Francs a furrier purchased it.

Elegantly then he trimmed it,
And he edged it round with scarlet,
And again he sold it quickly
Just for double what it cost.

So, at last, third hand possessed it--
Julietta, and at Paris
It reposes in her chamber,
Serving as a bed-side carpet.

What of Mumma? Ah, the Mumma
Is a poor weak woman! Frailty
Is her name! Alas, the women
Are as so much porcelain frail.

When the hand of Fate had parted
Mumma from her noble husband,
Neither did she die of sorrow,
Nor succumb to melancholy.

And at last a fixed appointment,
And for life a safe provision,
Far away she found at Paris
In the famed Jardin des Plantes.

Sunday last as I was walking
In the gardens with Julietta,
By the railing round the bear-pit--
Gracious Heavens! What saw we there!

'Twas a powerful desert bear
From Siberia, snow-white coated,
Playing there an over-tender,
Amorous game with some black she-bear.