No More Learning

He shared among his crowding friends
The silver and the gold,
They clasping bland his gift,--his hand
In a somewhat slacker hold.


II.

They wended forth, the crowding friends,
With farewells smooth and kind.
They wended forth, the solaced friends,
And left but twain behind:
One loved him true as brothers do,
And one was Rosalind.


III.

He said, "My friends have wended forth
With farewells smooth and kind;
Mine oldest friend, my plighted bride,
Ye need not stay behind:
Friend, wed my fair bride for my sake,
And let my lands ancestral make
A dower for Rosalind.


IV.

"And when beside your wassail board
Ye bless your social lot,
I charge you that the giver be
In all his gifts forgot,
Or alone of all his words recall
The last,--Lament me not. "


V.

She looked upon him silently
With her large, doubting eyes,
Like a child that never knew but love
Whom words of wrath surprise,
Till the rose did break from either cheek
And the sudden tears did rise.


VI.

She looked upon him mournfully,
While her large eyes were grown
Yet larger with the steady tears,
Till, all his purpose known,
She turned slow, as she would go--
The tears were shaken down.


VII.

She turned slow, as she would go,
Then quickly turned again,
And gazing in his face to seek
Some little touch of pain,
"I thought," she said,--but shook her head,--
She tried that speech in vain.


VIII.
"I thought--but I am half a child
And very sage art thou--
The teachings of the heaven and earth
Should keep us soft and low:
They have drawn _my_ tears in early years,
Or ere I wept--as now.


IX.

"But now that in thy face I read
Their cruel homily,
Before their beauty I would fain
Untouched, unsoftened be,--
If I indeed could look on even
The senseless, loveless earth and heaven
As thou canst look on me!


X.

"And couldest thou as coldly view
Thy childhood's far abode,
Where little feet kept time with thine
Along the dewy sod,
And thy mother's look from holy book
Rose like a thought of God?


XI.

"O brother,--called so, ere her last
Betrothing words were said!
O fellow-watcher in her room,
With hushed voice and tread!
Rememberest thou how, hand in hand
O friend, O lover, we did stand,
And knew that she was dead?


XII.

"I will not live Sir Roland's bride,
That dower I will not hold;
I tread below my feet that go,
These parchments bought and sold:
The tears I weep are mine to keep,
And worthier than thy gold. "


XIII.

The poet and Sir Roland stood
Alone, each turned to each,
Till Roland brake the silence left
By that soft-throbbing speech--
"Poor heart! " he cried, "it vainly tried
The distant heart to reach.


XIV.

"And thou, O distant, sinful heart
That climbest up so high
To wrap and blind thee with the snows
That cause to dream and die,
What blessing can, from lips of man,
Approach thee with his sigh?