No More Learning

ROME
BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER
(_April_, 1887)


THESE numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome
Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.

And cracking frieze and rotten metope
Express, as though they were an open tome
Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;
"Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity! "

And yet within these ruins' very shade
The singing workmen shape and set and join
Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin
With no apparent sense that years abrade,
Though each rent wall their feeble works invade
Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.



ROME
THE VATICAN--SALA DELLE MUSE
(1887)


I SAT in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,
And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,
And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,
Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,
But each and the whole--an essence of all the Nine;
With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,
A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

"Regarded so long, we render thee sad? " said she.
"Not you," sighed I, "but my own inconstancy!
I worship each and each; in the morning one,
And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

"To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth
Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both? "
--"Be not perturbed," said she. "Though apart in fame,
As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.

--"But my loves go further--to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,
The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim--
Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run! "
--"Nay, wight, thou sway'st not.
These are but phases of one;

"And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,
One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be--
Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall,
Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all! "



ROME
AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS
NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS
(1887)


WHO, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? --
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word
Of anything he did;
For me he is a man who died and was interred
To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest
Not with its first design,
Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest
Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,
Slew, breathed out threatening;
I know not. This I know: in death all silently
He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet
With marble finger high
To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,
Those matchless singers lie . . .

--Say, then, he lived and died
That stones which bear his name
Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;
It is an ample fame.



LAUSANNE
IN GIBBON'S OLD GARDEN: 11-12 P. M.
_June_ 27, 1897


(_The_ 110_th_ _anniversary of the completion of the_ "_Decline and
Fall_" _at the same hour and place_)

A SPIRIT seems to pass,
Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:
He contemplates a volume stout and tall,
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

Anon the book is closed,
With "It is finished! " And at the alley's end
He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;
And, as from earth, comes speech--small, muted, yet composed.

"How fares the Truth now?