MASTER AND SCHOLAR

LET me retrace the record of the years

That made me what I am. A man most wise,

But overworn with toil and bent with age,

Sought me to be his scholar, - me, run wild

From books and teachers, - kindled in my soul

The love of knowledge; led me to his tower,

Showed me the wonders of the midnight realm

His hollow sceptre ruled, or seemed to rule,

Taught me the mighty secrets of the spheres,

Trained me to find the glimmering specks of light

Beyond the unaided sense, and on my chart

To string them one by one, in order due,

As on a rosary a saint his beads.

I was his only scholar; I became

The echo to his thought; whate'er he knew

Was mine for asking; so from year to year

W e wrought together, till there came a time

When I, the learner, was the master half

Of the twinned being in the dome-crowned tower.

Minds roll in paths like planets; they revolve,

This in a larger, that a narrower ring,

But round they come at last to that same phase,

That selfsame light and shade they showed before.

I learned his annual and his monthly tale,

His weekly axiom and his daily phrase,

I felt them coming in the laden air,

And watched them laboring up to vocal breath,

Even as the first-born at his father's board

Knows ere he speaks the too familiar jest

Is on its way, by some mysterious sign

Forewarned, the click before the striking bell.

He shrivelled as I spread my growing leaves,

Till trust and reverence changed to pitying care;

He lived for me in what he once had been,

But I for him, a shadow, a defence,

The guardian of his fame, his guide, his staff,

Leaned on so long he fell if left alone.

I was his eye, his ear, his cunning hand,

Love was my spur and longing after fame,

But his the goading thorn of sleepless age

That sees its shortening span, its lengthening shades,

That clutches what it may with eager grasp,

And drops at last with empty, outstretched hands.

All this he dreamed not. He would sit him down

Thinking to work his problems as of old,

And find the star he thought so plain a blur,

The columned figures labyrinthine wilds

Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls

That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive

And struggle for a while, and then his eye

Would lose its light, and over all his mind

The cold gray mist would settle; and erelong

The darkness fell, and I was left alone.