No More Learning

Thy Memnon, when his peaceful lips are kissed
With earliest rays, that from his mother's eyes
Flow over the Arabian bay, no more
Breathes low into the charmed ears of morn
Clear melody flattering the crisped Nile
By columned Thebes. Old Memphis hath gone down:
The Pharaohs are no more: somewhere in death
They sleep with staring eyes and gilded lips,
Wrapped round with spiced cerements in old grots
Rock-hewn and sealed for ever.




XXVI

=Anacreontics=

[Published in _The Gem: a Literary Annual_. London: W. Marshall,
Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi. ]

With roses musky breathed,
And drooping daffodilly,
And silverleaved lily,
And ivy darkly-wreathed,
I wove a crown before her,
For her I love so dearly,
A garland for Lenora.
With a silken cord I bound it.
Lenora, laughing clearly
A light and thrilling laughter,
About her forehead wound it,
And loved me ever after.




XXVII

[Published in _The Gem: a Literary Annual_. London: W. Marshall,
Holborn Bars, mdcccxxxi. ]

O sad _No more! _ O sweet _No more! _
O strange _No more! _
By a mossed brookbank on a stone
I smelt a wildweed flower alone;
There was a ringing in my ears,
And both my eyes gushed out with tears.
Surely all pleasant things had gone before,
Low-buried fathom deep beneath with thee,
NO MORE!




XXVIII

=Sonnet=

[Published in the _Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831. London:
Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. Reprinted in _Friendship's Offering:
a Literary Album_ for 1833. London; Smith and Elder. ]

Check every outflash, every ruder sally
Of thought and speech; speak low, and give up wholly
Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy;
This is the place. Through yonder poplar alley
Below, the blue-green river windeth slowly;
But in the middle of the sombre valley
The crisped waters whisper musically,
And all the haunted place is dark and holy.
The nightingale, with long and low preamble,
Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches,
And in and out the woodbine's flowery arches
The summer midges wove their wanton gambol,
And all the white-stemmed pinewood slept above--
When in this valley first I told my love.




XXIX

=Sonnet=

[Published in _Friendships Offering: a Literary Album_ for 1832.
London: Smith and Elder. ]

Me my own fate to lasting sorrow doometh:
Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory:
Thy spirit, circled with a living glory,
In summer still a summer joy resumeth.
Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh,
Like a lone cypress, through the twilight hoary,
From an old garden where no flower bloometh,
One cypress on an inland promontory.
But yet my lonely spirit follows thine,
As round the rolling earth night follows day:
But yet thy lights on my horizon shine
Into my night when thou art far away;
I am so dark, alas! and thou so bright,
When we two meet there's never perfect light.




XXX

=Sonnet=

[Published in the _Yorkshire Literary Annual_ for 1832. Edited by C.