No More Learning

Search narrowly the lines! --they hold a treasure
Divine--a talisman--an amulet
That must be worn _at heart_. Search well the measure--
The words--the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor!
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot

Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie _perdus_
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets--as the name is a poet's, too.
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto--Mendez Ferdinando--
Still form a synonym for Truth--Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best _you_ can do.

1846.



[To discover the names in this and the following poem read the first
letter of the first line in connection with the second letter of the
second line, the third letter of the third line, the fourth of the
fourth and so on to the end. ]




AN ENIGMA

"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet--
Trash of all trash! --how _can_ a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff-
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it. "
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles--ephemeral and _so_ transparent--
But _this_ is, now,--you may depend upon it--
Stable, opaque, immortal--all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't.



1847.


TO MY MOTHER

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you--
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother--my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

1849.

[The above was addressed to the poet's mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm--Ed. ]




FOR ANNIE

Thank Heaven! the crisis--
The danger is past,
And the lingering illness
Is over at last--
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.

Sadly, I know
I am shorn of my strength,
And no muscle I move
As I lie at full length--
But no matter! --I feel
I am better at length.

And I rest so composedly,
Now, in my bed,
That any beholder
Might fancy me dead--
Might start at beholding me,
Thinking me dead.

The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart:--ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!

The sickness--the nausea--
The pitiless pain--
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain--
With the fever called "Living"
That burned in my brain.

And oh! of all tortures
_That_ torture the worst
Has abated--the terrible
Torture of thirst
For the naphthaline river
Of Passion accurst:--
I have drank of a water
That quenches all thirst:--

Of a water that flows,
With a lullaby sound,
From a spring but a very few
Feet under ground--
From a cavern not very far
Down under ground.