8. I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more— Where does the fault lie? what the core Of the wound, since wound must be? 9. I would I could adopt your will, See with your eyes, and set my heart Beating by yours, and drink my fill At your soul's springs, In life, for good and ill. your part, my part 10. No. I yearn upward touch you close, Catch your soul's warmth, I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak — Then the good minute goes. 11. Already how am I so far Out of that minute? Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whenever light winds blow, Fixed by no friendly star? 12. Just when I seemed about to learn! Where is the thread now? Off again! The old trick! Only I discern Infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn. A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL. [Time Shortly after the revival of learning in Europe.] LET us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes, Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow. Look out if yonder 's not the day again Rimming the rock-row ! That's the appropriate country - there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer ! Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop ; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture ! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit ! Thither our path lies wind we up the heights — Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; Step to a tune, square chests, erect the head, This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, Sleep, crop and herd! Sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! No, that's the world's way! (keep the mountain-side, He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping, Theirs, who most studied man, the bard and sage, Give!" So he gowned him, Straight got by heart that book to its last page: Learned, we found him! Yea, but we found him bald too Accents uncertain : eyes like lead, "Time to taste life," another would have said, This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Still, there's the comment. Let me know all. Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy: Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give; Sooner, he spurned it! Image the whole, then execute the parts Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, (Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place Gaping before us.) |