No More Learning

Here, Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim:
The shapes of suns and stars did swim
Like clouds from them, and granted him

God for sole vision. Cowley, there,
Whose active fancy debonair
Drew straws like amber--foul to fair.

Drayton and Browne, with smiles they drew
From outward nature, still kept new
From their own inward nature true.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,
Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when
The world was worthy of such men.

And Burns, with pungent passionings
Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs
Are of the fire-mount's issuings.

And Shelley, in his white ideal,
All statue-blind. And Keats the real
Adonis with the hymeneal

Fresh vernal buds half sunk between
His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen
In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen.

And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave
And salt as life; forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave.

And visionary Coleridge, who
Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
Their wings with cadence up the Blue.

These poets faced (and many more)
The lighted altar looming o'er
The clouds of incense dim and hoar:

And all their faces, in the lull
Of natural things, looked wonderful
With life and death and deathless rule.

All, still as stone and yet intense;
As if by spirit's vehemence
That stone were carved and not by sense.

But where the heart of each should beat,
There seemed a wound instead of it,
From whence the blood dropped to their feet

Drop after drop--dropped heavily
As century follows century
Into the deep eternity.

Then said the lady--and her word
Came distant, as wide waves were stirred
Between her and the ear that heard,--

"_World's use_ is cold, _world's love_ is vain,
_World's cruelty_ is bitter bane,
But pain is not the fruit of pain.

"Hearken, O poet, whom I led
From the dark wood: dismissing dread,
Now hear this angel in my stead.

"His organ's clavier strikes along
These poets' hearts, sonorous, strong,
They gave him without count of wrong,--

"A diapason whence to guide
Up to God's feet, from these who died,
An anthem fully glorified--

"Whereat God's blessing, IBARAK (=yivarech=)
Breathes back this music, folds it back
About the earth in vapoury rack,

"And men walk in it, crying 'Lo
The world is wider, and we know
The very heavens look brighter so:

"'The stars move statelier round the edge
Of the silver spheres, and give in pledge
Their light for nobler privilege:

"'No little flower but joys or grieves,
Full life is rustling in the sheaves,
Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves.
'

"So works this music on the earth,
God so admits it, sends it forth
To add another worth to worth--

"A new creation-bloom that rounds
The old creation and expounds
His Beautiful in tuneful sounds.

"Now hearken! " Then the poet gazed
Upon the angel glorious-faced
Whose hand, majestically raised,

Floated across the organ-keys,
Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas,
With no touch but with influences:

Then rose and fell (with swell and swound
Of shapeless noises wandering round
A concord which at last they found)

Those mystic keys: the tones were mixed,
Dim, faint, and thrilled and throbbed betwixt
The incomplete and the unfixed:

And therein mighty minds were heard
In mighty musings, inly stirred,
And struggling outward for a word:

Until these surges, having run
This way and that, gave out as one
An Aphrodite of sweet tune,

A Harmony that, finding vent,
Upward in grand ascension went,
Winged to a heavenly argument,

Up, upward like a saint who strips
The shroud back from his eyes and lips,
And rises in apocalypse:

A harmony sublime and plain,
Which cleft (as flying swan, the rain,--
Throwing the drops off with a strain

Of her white wing) those undertones
Of perplext chords, and soared at once
And struck out from the starry thrones

Their several silver octaves as
It passed to God. The music was
Of divine stature; strong to pass:

And those who heard it, understood
Something of life in spirit and blood,
Something of nature's fair and good:

And while it sounded, those great souls
Did thrill as racers at the goals
And burn in all their aureoles;

But she the lady, as vapour-bound,
Stood calmly in the joy of sound,
Like Nature with the showers around:

And when it ceased, the blood which fell
Again, alone grew audible,
Tolling the silence as a bell.

The sovran angel lifted high
His hand, and spake out sovranly:
"Tried poets, hearken and reply!

"Give me true answers. If we grant
That not to suffer, is to want
The conscience of the jubilant,--

"If ignorance of anguish is
_But_ ignorance, and mortals miss
Far prospects, by a level bliss,--

"If, as two colours must be viewed
In a visible image, mortals should
Need good and evil, to see good,--

"If to speak nobly, comprehends
To feel profoundly,--if the ends
Of power and suffering, Nature blends,--

"If poets on the tripod must
Writhe like the Pythian to make just
Their oracles and merit trust,--

"If every vatic word that sweeps
To change the world must pale their lips
And leave their own souls in eclipse,--

"If to search deep the universe
Must pierce the searcher with the curse,
Because that bolt (in man's reverse)

"Was shot to the heart o' the wood and lies
Wedged deepest in the best,--if eyes
That look for visions and surprise

"From influent angels, must shut down
Their eyelids first to sun and moon,
The head asleep upon a stone,--

"If ONE who did redeem you back,
By His own loss, from final wrack,
Did consecrate by touch and track

"Those temporal sorrows till the taste
Of brackish waters of the waste
Is salt with tears He dropt too fast,--

"If all the crowns of earth must wound
With prickings of the thorns He found,--
If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound,--

"What say ye unto this? --refuse
This baptism in salt water? --choose
Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose?

"Or, O ye gifted givers! ye
Who give your liberal hearts to me
To make the world this harmony,

"Are ye resigned that they be spent
To such world's help? "
The Spirits bent
Their awful brows and said "Content. "

Content! it sounded like _Amen_
Said by a choir of mourning men;
An affirmation full of pain

And patience,--ay, of glorying
And adoration, as a king
Might seal an oath for governing.

Then said the angel--and his face
Lightened abroad until the place
Grew larger for a moment's space,--

The long aisles flashing out in light,
And nave and transept, columns white
And arches crossed, being clear to sight

As if the roof were off and all
Stood in the noon-sun,--"Lo, I call
To other hearts as liberal.

"This pedal strikes out in the air:
My instrument has room to bear
Still fuller strains and perfecter.