No More Learning

"Bloom is in the garden-close dead,
All within its season rounds fair,
See how yonder summit glows red.
Only memory leaves him prize-dreams,
Who to happier ones the way treads,
Golden glory from his eyes beams,
Which in flight he on the way sheds.
Lift thy tired head that fain bends,
Should a visage from the night rise,
And thus wait until my strain ends,
And thus tarry until the light dies. "
45

? Dream and Death
LUSTRE and fame! thus ariseth our sphere
Like heroes we banish both mountain and mere,
Young and great beams the spirit, unbound
On the fields, on the floods that surround.
O'er the way, a light breaks, a form flies,
And both rapture and grief swiftly rise,
The Supreme, muses, weeps, to bend were fain:
"Thou my weal, thou my star, thou my gain. "
Then a dream of great pomp rises o'er,
And it conquers the god that it bore,
Till a shout casts us down far beneath;
We so small, and so stript before death.
All these storm, tear and beat, blare and blast,
Till on the night-firmament at last,
Converged in a light-gem that glisteneth;
Lustre and fame, rapture and grief, dream and death.

? FROM
THE SEVENTH RING

?
? From "Tides
TROUBLED soul--thus didst thou ask--why art thou
mourning?
Is this then thy return for fate's good will?
Sickly soul--I said to thee--but now in mourning
This fate is wrong and makes me deathly ill.
Pallid soul--thus didst thou ask--is dead the fire
Forever, that divinely in us burns?
Blinded soul--I said to thee--I'm full of fire;
My yearning is mine only grief that burns.
Harden'd soul--thus didst thou ask--can more be
given
Than youth can give? I gave mine every good. .
Has e'er a higher wish in any bosom thriven
Than this one: take unto thy weal my blood!
Flighty soul--I said to thee--what means "I love
thee " 1
A shade alone of that for thee I shed . . .
Sombre soul--thus didst thou say--I needs must love
thee
Although through thee my fairest dream be dead.
49

? Now let me call across the snow-clad meadows,
Wherein you threatened oft to sink away,
As you, oblivious, lead me through the shadows
Of time--my solace now--but erst in play.
You came amidst the show of flow'ry splendour,
Again I saw you at the aftermath,
And, 'mid the ruddy corn-blades' rustling tender,
Unto your cottage always wound my path.
Your speech resounded, as the foliage faded,
So gently, that my life in yours I laid.
And as you left, suspired confused and jaded
In sighful accents the deserted glade.
Thus did alone, with every wand'ring wended
As goal, the shimmer of two eyelets glow,
Thus your faint song as song of the year ascended,
And all befell, since you ordained it so.