No More Learning

She felt the scimitar gleam down,
And met it from beneath
With smile more bright in victory
Than any sword from sheath,--
Which flashed across her lip serene,
Most like the spirit-light between
The darks of life and death.

XLIV.

_Ingemisco, ingemisco! _
From the convent on the sea,
Now it sweepeth solemnly,
As over wood and over lea
Bodily the wind did carry
The great altar of St. Mary,
And the fifty tapers paling o'er it,
And the Lady Abbess stark before it,
And the weary nuns with hearts that faintly
Beat along their voices saintly--
_Ingemisco, ingemisco! _
Dirge for abbess laid in shroud
Sweepeth o'er the shroudless dead,
Page or lady, as we said,
With the dews upon her head,
All as sad if not as loud.
_Ingemisco, ingemisco! _
Is ever a lament begun
By any mourner under sun,
Which, ere it endeth, suits but _one_?




_THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY. _


FIRST PART.


I.

"Onora, Onora,"--her mother is calling,
She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling
Drop after drop from the sycamores laden
With dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden,
"Night cometh, Onora. "

II.

She looks down the garden-walk caverned with trees,
To the limes at the end where the green arbour is--
"Some sweet thought or other may keep where it found her,
While, forgot or unseen in the dreamlight around her,
Night cometh--Onora! "

III.
She looks up the forest whose alleys shoot on
Like the mute minster-aisles when the anthem is done
And the choristers sitting with faces aslant
Feel the silence to consecrate more than the chant--
"Onora, Onora! "

IV.

And forward she looketh across the brown heath--
"Onora, art coming? "--what is it she seeth?
Nought, nought but the grey border-stone that is wist
To dilate and assume a wild shape in the mist--
"My daughter! " Then over

V.

The casement she leaneth, and as she doth so
She is 'ware of her little son playing below:
"Now where is Onora? " He hung down his head
And spake not, then answering blushed scarlet-red,--
"At the tryst with her lover. "

VI.

But his mother was wroth: in a sternness quoth she,
"As thou play'st at the ball art thou playing with me?
When we know that her lover to battle is gone,
And the saints know above that she loveth but one
And will ne'er wed another? "

VII.

Then the boy wept aloud; 't was a fair sight yet sad
To see the tears run down the sweet blooms he had:
He stamped with his foot, said--"The saints know I lied
Because truth that is wicked is fittest to hide:
Must I utter it, mother? "

VIII.

In his vehement childhood he hurried within
And knelt at her feet as in prayer against sin,
But a child at a prayer never sobbeth as he--
"Oh! she sits with the nun of the brown rosary,
At nights in the ruin--

IX.