Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold
Page 15
Too harass’d, to attain
Wordsworth’s sweet calm, or Goethe’s wide
And luminous view to gain. 80
And then we turn, thou sadder Sage!
To thee: we feel thy spell.
The hopeless tangle of our age —
Thou too hast scann’d it well.
Immovable thou sittest; still 85
As death; compos’d to bear.
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill —
And icy thy despair.
Yes, as the Son of Thetis said,
One hears thee saying now — 90
Greater by far than thou are dead:
Strive not: die also thou. —
Ah! Two desires toss about
The poet’s feverish blood.
One drives him to the world without, 95
And one to solitude.
The glow, he cries, the thrill of life —
Where, where do these abound? —
Not in the world, not in the strife
Of men, shall they be found. 100
He who hath watch’d, not shar’d, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone;
He only lives with the world’s life
Who hath renounc’d his own.
To thee we come, then. Clouds are roll’d 105
Where thou, O Seer, art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold —
The world is colder yet!
And thou hast pleasures too to share
With those who come to thee: 110
Balms floating on thy mountain air,
And healing sights to see.
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet door, and seen 115
The summer day grow late,
And darkness steal o’er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starr’d,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward, 120
Lake Leman’s waters, far below:
And watch’d the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow:
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue 125
Through the pine branches play:
Listen’d, and felt thyself grow young;
Listen’d, and wept —— Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad Guide, adieu! 130
I go; Fate drives me: but I leave
Half of my life with you.
We, in some unknown Power’s employ,
Move on a rigorous line:
Can neither, when we will, enjoy; 135
Nor, when we will, resign.
I in the world must live: — but thou,
Thou melancholy Shade!
Wilt not, if thou canst see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid. 140
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The Children of the Second Birth
Whom the world could not tame;
And with that small transfigur’d Band, 145
Whom many a different way
Conducted to their common land,
Thou learn’st to think as they.
Christian and pagan, king and slave,
Soldier and anchorite, 150
Distinctions we esteem so grave,
Are nothing in their sight.
They do not ask, who pin’d unseen,
Who was on action hurl’d,
Whose one bond is that all have been 155
Unspotted by the world.
There without anger thou wilt see
Him who obeys thy spell
No more, so he but rest, like thee,
Unsoil’d: — and so, Farewell! 160
Farewell! — Whether thou now liest near
That much-lov’d inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie,
And in that gracious region bland, 165
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,
Between the dusty vineyard walls
Issuing on that green place 170
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger’s face,
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again; —
Or whether, by maligner Fate, 175
Among the swarms of men,
Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
The Capital of Pleasure sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave — 180
Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!
Consolation
MIST clogs the sunshine,
Smoky dwarf houses
Hem me round everywhere.
A vague dejection
Weighs down my soul. 5
Yet, while I languish,
Everywhere, countless
Prospects unroll themselves,
And countless beings
Pass countless moods. 10
Far hence, in Asia,
On the smooth convent-roofs,
On the gold terraces
Of holy Lassa,
Bright shines the sun. 15
Grey time-worn marbles
Hold the pure Muses.
In their cool gallery,
By yellow Tiber,
They still look fair. 20
Strange unlov’d uproar
Shrills round their portal.
Yet not on Helicon
Kept they more cloudless
Their noble calm. 25
Through sun-proof alleys
In a lone, sand-hemm’d
City of Africa,
A blind, led beggar,
Age-bow’d, asks alms. 30
No bolder Robber
Erst abode ambush’d
Deep in the sandy waste:
No clearer eyesight
Spied prey afar. 35
Saharan sand-winds
Sear’d his keen eyeballs.
Spent is the spoil he won.
For him the present
Holds only pain. 40
Two young, fair lovers,
Where the warm June wind,
Fresh from the summer fields,
Plays fondly round them,
Stand, tranc’d in joy. 45
With sweet, join’d voices,
And with eyes brimming —
‘Ah,’ they cry, ‘Destiny!
Prolong the present!
Time! stand still here!’ 50
The prompt stern Goddess
Shakes her head, frowning.
Time gives his hour-glass
Its due reversal.
Their hour is gone. 55
With weak indulgence
Did the just Goddess
Lengthen their happiness,
She lengthen’d also
Distress elsewhere. 60
The hour, whose happy
Unalloy’d moments
I would eternalize,
Ten thousand mourners
Well pleas’d see end. 65
The bleak stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is pass’d by others
In warmth, light, joy. 70
Time, so complain’d of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm’d hours. 75
Lines written in Kensington Gardens
IN this lone open glade I lie,
Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its head, to stay the eye,
Those black-cro
wn’d, red-boled pine-trees stand.
Birds here make song, each bird has his, 5
Across the girdling city’s hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy; 10
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day’s employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass! 15
An air-stirr’d forest, fresh and clear.
Scarce fresher is the mountain sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch’d out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day’s spoil, the spotted trout. 20
In the huge world which roars hard by
Be others happy, if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.
I, on men’s impious uproar hurl’d, 25
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.
Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I, who watch them, am away, 30
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.
Then to their happy rest they pass;
The flowers close, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass, 35
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar! 40
The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.
The World’s Triumphs
SO far as I conceive the World’s rebuke
To him address’d who would recast her new,
Not from herself her fame of strength she took,
But from their weakness, who would work her rue.
‘Behold,’ she cries, ‘so many rages lull’d, 5
So many fiery spirits quite cool’d down:
Look how so many valours, long undull’d,
After short commerce with me, fear my frown.
Thou too, when thou against my crimes wouldst cry,
Let thy foreboded homage check thy tongue.’ — 10
The World speaks well: yet might her foe reply —
‘Are wills so weak? then let not mine wait long.
Hast thou so rare a poison? let me be
Keener to slay thee, lest thou poison me.’
The Second Best
MODERATE tasks and moderate leisure,
Quiet living, strict-kept measure
Both in suffering and in pleasure —
‘Tis for this thy nature yearns.
But so many books thou readest, 5
But so many schemes thou breedest,
But so many wishes feedest,
That thy poor head almost turns.
And (the world’s so madly jangled,
Human things so fast entangled) 10
Nature’s wish must now be strangled
For that best which she discerns.
So it must be! yet, while leading
A strain’d life, while overfeeding,
Like the rest, his wit with reading, 15
No small profit that man earns,
Who through all he meets can steer him,
Can reject what cannot clear him,
Cling to what can truly cheer him!
Who each day more surely learns 20
That an impulse, from the distance
Of his deepest, best existence,
To the words ‘Hope, Light, Persistence,’
Strongly stirs and truly burns!
Revolutions
BEFORE Man parted for this earthly strand,
While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood,
God put a heap of letters in his hand,
And bade him make with them what word he could.
And Man has turn’d them many times: made Greece, 5
Rome, England, France: — yes, nor in vain essay’d
Way after way, changes that never cease.
The letters have combin’d: something was made.
But ah, an inextinguishable sense
Haunts him that he has not made what he should. 10
That he has still, though old, to recommence,
Since he has not yet found the word God would.
And Empire after Empire, at their height
Of sway, have felt this boding sense come on.
Have felt their huge frames not constructed right, 15
And droop’d, and slowly died upon their throne.
One day, thou say’st, there will at last appear
The word, the order, which God meant should be. —
Ah, we shall know that well when it comes near:
The band will quit Man’s heart: — he will breathe free. 20
The Youth of Nature
RAIS’D are the dripping oars —
Silent the boat: the lake,
Lovely and soft as a dream,
Swims in the sheen of the moon.
The mountains stand at its head 5
Clear in the pure June night,
But the valleys are flooded with haze.
Rydal and Fairfield are there;
In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.
So it is, so it will be for aye. 10
Nature is fresh as of old,
Is lovely: a mortal is dead.
The spots which recall him survive,
For he lent a new life to these hills.
The Pillar still broods o’er the fields 15
Which border Ennerdale Lake,
And Egremont sleeps by the sea.
The gleam of The Evening Star
Twinkles on Grasmere no more,
But ruin’d and solemn and grey 20
The sheepfold of Michael survives,
And far to the south, the heath
Still blows in the Quantock coombs,
By the favourite waters of Ruth.
These survive: yet not without pain, 25
Pain and dejection to-night,
Can I feel that their Poet is gone.
He grew old in an age he condemn’d.
He look’d on the rushing decay
Of the times which had shelter’d his youth. 30
Felt the dissolving throes
Of a social order he lov’d.
Outliv’d his brethren, his peers.
And, like the Theban seer,
Died in his enemies’ day. 35
Cold bubbled the spring of Tilphusa,
Copais lay bright in the moon;
Helicon glass’d in the lake
Its firs, and afar, rose the peaks
Of Parnassus, snowily clear: 40
Thebes was behind him in flames,
And the clang of arms in his ear,
When his awe-struck captors led
The Theban seer to the spring.
Tiresias drank and died. 45
Nor did reviving Thebes
See such a prophet again.
Well may we mourn, when the head
Of a sacred poet lies low
In an age which can rear them no more. 50
The complaining millions of men
Darken in labour and pain;
But he was a priest to us all
Of the wonder and bloom of the world,
Which we saw with his eyes, and were glad. 55
He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day
Of his race is past on the earth;
And darkness returns to our eyes.
For oh, is it you, is it you,
Moonlight, and shadow, and lake, 60
And mountains, that fill us with joy,
Or the Poet who sings you so well?
Is it you, O Beauty, O Grace,
O Charm, O Romance, that we feel,
Or the voice which reveals what you are? 65
Are ye, like daylight and sun,
Shar’d and rejoic’d in by all?
Or are ye immers’d in the mass
Of matter, and hard to extract,
Or sunk at the core of the world 70
Too deep for the most to discern?
Like stars in deep of the sky,
Which arise on the glass of the sage,
But are lost when their watcher is gone.
‘They are here’ — I heard, as men heard 75
In Mysian Ida the voice
Of the Mighty Mother, or Crete,
The murmur of Nature reply —
‘Loveliness, Magic, and Grace,
They are here — they are set in the world — 80
They abide — and the finest of souls
Has not been thrill’d by them all,
Nor the dullest been dead to them quite.
The poet who sings them may die,
But they are immortal, and live, 85
For they are the life of the world.
Will ye not learn it, and know,
When ye mourn that a poet is dead,
That the singer was less than his themes,
Life, and Emotion, and I? 90
‘More than the singer are these.
Weak is the tremor of pain
That thrills in his mournfullest chord
To that which once ran through his soul.
Cold the elation of joy 95
In his gladdest, airiest song,
To that which of old in his youth
Fill’d him and made him divine.
Hardly his voice at its best