No More Learning

'

They think I burrow from the sun,
In darkness, all alone, and weak;
Such loss were gain if He were won,
For 'tis the sun's own Sun I seek.

'The earth,' they murmur, 'is the tomb
That vainly sought his life to prison;
Why grovel longer in the gloom?
He is not here; he hath arisen. '

More life for me where he hath lain
Hidden while ye believed him dead,
Than in cathedrals cold and vain,
Built on loose sands of _It is said_.

My search is for the living gold;
Him I desire who dwells recluse,
And not his image worn and old,
Day-servant of our sordid use.

If him I find not, yet I find
The ancient joy of cell and church,
The glimpse, the surety undefined,
The unquenched ardor of the search.

Happier to chase a flying goal
Than to sit counting laurelled gains,
To guess the Soul within the soul
Than to be lord of what remains.

Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise,
Beyond my nature's utmost scope;
Be ever absent from mine eyes
To be twice present in my hope!



GOLD EGG: A DREAM-FANTASY

HOW A STUDENT IN SEARCH OF THE BEAUTIFUL FELL ASLEEP IN DRESDEN OVER HERR
PROFESSOR DOCTOR VISCHER'S WISSENSCHAFT DES SCHONEN, AND WHAT CAME THEREOF

I swam with undulation soft,
Adrift on Vischer's ocean,
And, from my cockboat up aloft,
Sent down my mental plummet oft
In hope to reach a notion.

But from the metaphysic sea
No bottom was forthcoming,
And all the while (how drearily! )
In one eternal note of B
My German stove kept humming. 10

'What's Beauty? ' mused I; 'is it told
By synthesis? analysis?
Have you not made us lead of gold?
To feed your crucible, not sold
Our temple's sacred chalices? '

Then o'er my senses came a change;
My book seemed all traditions,
Old legends of profoundest range,
Diablery, and stories strange
Of goblins, elves, magicians. 20

Old gods in modern saints I found,
Old creeds in strange disguises;
I thought them safely underground,
And here they were, all safe and sound,
Without a sign of phthisis.

Truth was, my outward eyes were closed,
Although I did not know it;
Deep into dream-land I had dozed,
And thus was happily transposed
From proser into poet. 30

So what I read took flesh and blood,
And turned to living creatures:
The words were but the dingy bud
That bloomed, like Adam, from the mud,
To human forms and features.

I saw how Zeus was lodged once more
By Baucis and Philemon;
The text said, 'Not alone of yore,
But every day, at every door
Knocks still the masking Demon. ' 40

DAIMON 'twas printed in the book
And, as I read it slowly,
The letters stirred and changed, and took
Jove's stature, the Olympian look
Of painless melancholy.

He paused upon the threshold worn:
'With coin I cannot pay you;
Yet would I fain make some return;
The gift for cheapness do not spurn,
Accept this hen, I pray you. 50

'Plain feathers wears my Hemera,
And has from ages olden;
She makes her nest in common hay,
And yet, of all the birds that lay,
Her eggs alone are golden. '

He turned, and could no more be seen;
Old Bancis stared a moment,
Then tossed poor Partlet on the green,
And with a tone, half jest, half spleen,
Thus made her housewife's comment: 60

'The stranger had a queerish face,
His smile was hardly pleasant,
And, though he meant it for a grace,
Yet this old hen of barnyard race
Was but a stingy present.

'She's quite too old for laying eggs,
Nay, even to make a soup of;
One only needs to see her legs,--
You might as well boil down the pegs
I made the brood-hen's coop of! 70

'Some eighteen score of such do I
Raise every year, her sisters;
Go, in the woods your fortunes try,
All day for one poor earthworm pry,
And scratch your toes to blisters! '

Philemon found the rede was good,
And, turning on the poor hen,
He clapt his hands, and stamped, and shooed,
Hunting the exile tow'rd the wood,
To house with snipe and moorhen. 80

A poet saw and cried: 'Hold! hold!
What are you doing, madman?