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Did I dream I could
have been wearied thus,
With truth and with wisdoms left to seek?
Alas, my learners who heard me speak
"Is not to learn enough for us?
Is not to strive a strength for the soul,
Though she never gained one foot to the goal?"
If you could waken now where you lie,
You and your graves forgotten as I
In our town that would tell our names for its praise;
If you could hear, and your pitying gaze
Could know the teacher who made you bold!
Nay, sleep on unconscious there in the mould:
You died with a joy as of something gained,
Something given to the world you left;
I laboured on to be ever bereft
Of the skill achieved, of the science attained.
For, lo, the end of all learning is this,
Only to know one has learned amiss,
Only to know that the art or the lore
With its rules and its axioms was nothing more
Than a working guess that did for the while;
Only to know that sage after sage
Has passed on a dream from age to age,
Till the world awakes, and the children smile
At the thoughts of the foolish grown-men of old.
Aye, sleep, ye who counted your lives well spent,
Sleep, ye who dreamed; ye are content
Thou who hadst gained the secret of gold,
Save that one last fusion left me to find;
Thou who hadst tracked the sun's path through the air;
Thou with thy skill of the stars; thou there
In the chapel vault, with thy name still shown
To sauntering strangers, cut on the stone,
With thy chronicle of the world left behind;
Thou who hadst learned and hadst lighted on cures
For every ill man's body endures,
And leftst me thy leechcrafts for legacy;
Thou; and thou; and thou; oh, poor fools,
Who dreamed ye had found the thing ye sought,
Sleep, sleep and know not. All goes by,
Lores, and crafts, and beliefs, and schools;
Wrought is unravelled; thought is new-thought;
Till meseems that truth's very self must die,
And be born again unto younger rules.
Next page
I
II
III IV
V VI
VII
Home
A Bird And Flower
A Coarse Morning
A
Comrade A Song Of A Springtime
A Summer Mood
Autumn
Warnings Baby Eyes
Belated Betrothed
Beyond The
Shadow Day Is Dead And Let Us Sleep
Dear Love, Goodnight
Dearest, This One Day we Own
Disenchanted
Farewell Hark
The Skylight In The Cloud
Her Memories
In After Years
Late Roses
Linnet And Lark
Miles And Miles
My Loss
News To The King
No News From The War
Not Love Not To
Be Once A Sea Nymph Loved A Boy
Once One Star Only For
Love's Heaven Poulain The Prisoner
Question And Answer
Seeds With Wings
Siste Viator
Spring And Summer
St.-Amé
Tell Me Not Of Morrows Sweet
Tell Thee Truth Sweet No
The
Apple Orchard The Bees
In The Lime
The Bindweed
The Brambles
The Brook Rhine
The Butterfly
The Cornflower
The Daughter
The First Spring Day
The Flower By The Path
The Flowers to Come
The Flowing Tide
The Frozen River
The Graveyard
The Heart That Lacks Room
The Heather
The Holly
The Lovers
The Missing Star
The Nightingale
The Old Dream
The Old Love
The Pine
The Primrose
The Rivulet
The Sea-Maid's Song
The Skylark's Song
The Snows
The Storm
The Swallows
The Violet And The Rose The Whisper
The Wind's Tidings
To-Day Too Soon So Far, Fair Lillies
Waiting
We Two
Where Found Love His Yesterday
Where home
Was While The Woods Were Green
White Rose And Red
Young May |
