No More Learning

THE DREAM-FOLLOWER


A DREAM of mine flew over the mead
To the halls where my old Love reigns;
And it drew me on to follow its lead:
And I stood at her window-panes;

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone
Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;
And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,
And I whitely hastened away.



HIS IMMORTALITY


I

I SAW a dead man's finer part
Shining within each faithful heart
Of those bereft. Then said I: "This must be
His immortality. "

II

I looked there as the seasons wore,
And still his soul continuously upbore
Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled
Than when I first beheld.

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then
In later hearts I looked for him again;
And found him--shrunk, alas! into a thin
And spectral mannikin.

IV

Lastly I ask--now old and chill--
If aught of him remain unperished still;
And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,
Dying amid the dark.

_February_ 1899.



THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN


I

I HEARD a small sad sound,
And stood awhile amid the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are ye distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest? "

II

--"O not at being here;
But that our future second death is drear;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
And blank oblivion comes!

III

"Those who our grandsires be
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry
With keenest backward eye.

IV

"They bide as quite forgot;
They are as men who have existed not;
Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;
It is the second death.

V

"We here, as yet, each day
Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway
In some soul hold a loved continuance
Of shape and voice and glance.

VI

"But what has been will be--
First memory, then oblivion's turbid sea;
Like men foregone, shall we merge into those
Whose story no one knows.
VII

"For which of us could hope
To show in life that world-awakening scope
Granted the few whose memory none lets die,
But all men magnify?

VIII

"We were but Fortune's sport;
Things true, things lovely, things of good report
We neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne,
And seeing it we mourn. "



WIVES IN THE SERE


I

NEVER a careworn wife but shows,
If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
Patient to peruse her,
Some one charm the world unknows
Precious to a muser,
Haply what, ere years were foes,
Moved her mate to choose her.

II

But, be it a hint of rose
That an instant hues her,
Or some early light or pose
Wherewith thought renews her--
Seen by him at full, ere woes
Practised to abuse her--
Sparely comes it, swiftly goes,
Time again subdues her.



THE SUPERSEDED


I

AS newer comers crowd the fore,
We drop behind.
--We who have laboured long and sore
Times out of mind,
And keen are yet, must not regret
To drop behind.

II

Yet there are of us some who grieve
To go behind;
Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe
Their fires declined,
And know none cares, remembers, spares
Who go behind.

III

'Tis not that we have unforetold
The drop behind;
We feel the new must oust the old
In every kind;
But yet we think, must we, must _we_,
Too, drop behind?



AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT


I

A SHADED lamp and a waving blind,
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined--
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
While 'mid my page there idly stands
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place,
At this point of time, at this point in space.
--My guests parade my new-penned ink,
Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.