No More Learning

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,--
And ever changing, like a joyless eye _5
That finds no object worth its constancy?

2.
Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,
That grazes on thee till in thee it pities. . .

***


DEATH.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
Death is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death--and we are death.

2.
Death has set his mark and seal _5
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

. . .

3.
First our pleasures die--and then
Our hopes, and then our fears--and when
These are dead, the debt is due, _10
Dust claims dust--and we die too.

4.
All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot--
Love itself would, did they not. _15

***


LIBERTY.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
The fiery mountains answer each other;
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. _5

2.
From a single cloud the lightening flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground. _10

3.
But keener thy gaze than the lightening's glare,
And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp;
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp
To thine is a fen-fire damp. _15

4.
From billow and mountain and exhalation
The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,--
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night _20
In the van of the morning light.

NOTE:
_4 zone editions 1824, 1839; throne later editions.

***


SUMMER AND WINTER.