No More Learning

See the Editor's prefatory note to the preceding. ]

1.
Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up,--to thy wonted work! come, trace _5
The epitaph of glory fled,--
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

2.
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam, _10
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep _15
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise. _20

3.
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced;
And, soothed by every azure breath, _25
That under Heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own,
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea, _30
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

4.
How calm it was! --the silence there
By such a chain was bound
That even the busy woodpecker _35
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew. _40
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the white mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,--
A spirit interfused around _45
A thrilling, silent life,--
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife;
And still I felt the centre of
The magic circle there _50
Was one fair form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.

5.
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,--
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky _55
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day-- _60
In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, _65
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen, _70
Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
An atmosphere without a breath, _75
A softer day below.
Like one beloved the scene had lent
To the dark water's breast,
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth expressed; _80
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from the mind's too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind, _85
The forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind,
Than calm in waters, seen.

NOTES:
_6 fled edition. 1824; dead Trelawny manuscript, 1839, 2nd edition.
_10 Ocean's]Ocean 1839, 2nd edition.
_24 Interlaced, 1839; interlaced; cj. A. C. Bradley.
_28 own; 1839 own, cj. A. C.