Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Part 30

Each on his own strict line we move, And some find death ere they find love; So far apart their lives are thrown From the twin soul which halves their own.

And sometimes, by still harder fate, The lovers meet, but meet too late.

--Thy heart is mine!--_True, true! ah, true!_ --Then, love, thy hand!--_Ah no! adieu!_

3. SEPARATION

Stop!--not to me, at this bitter departing, Speak of the sure consolations of time!

Fresh be the wound, still-renew'd be its smarting, So but thy image endure in its prime.

But, if the stedfast commandment of Nature Wills that remembrance should always decay-- If the loved form and the deep-cherish'd feature Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away--

Me let no half-effaced memories c.u.mber!

Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!

Deep be the darkness and still be the slumber-- Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!

Then, when we meet, and thy look strays toward me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there: _Who_, let me say, _is this stranger regards me, With the grey eyes, and the lovely brown hair_?

4. ON THE RHINE

Vain is the effort to forget.

Some day I shall be cold, I know, As is the eternal moonlit snow Of the high Alps, to which I go-- But ah! not yet, not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.

'Tis true, indeed, an iron knot Ties straitly up from mine thy lot, And were it snapt--thou lov'st me not!

But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done.

And as this brimm'd unwrinkled Rhine, And that far purple mountain-line, Lie sweetly in the look divine Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and, calm as they, Let beam upon my inward view Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue-- Eyes too expressive to be blue, Too lovely to be grey.

Ah, Quiet, all things feel thy balm!

Those blue hills too, this river's flow, Were restless once, but long ago.

Tamed is their turbulent youthful glow; Their joy is in their calm.

5. LONGING

Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, A messenger from radiant climes, And smile on thy new world, and be As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth, Come now, and let me dream it truth; And part my hair, and kiss my brow, And say: _My love! why sufferest thou?_

Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.

DESPONDENCY

The thoughts that rain their steady glow Like stars on life's cold sea, Which others know, or say they know-- They never shone for me.

Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit's sky, But they will not remain.

They light me once, they hurry by; And never come again.

SELF-DECEPTION

Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory Of possessing powers not our share?

--Since man woke on earth, he knows his story, But, before we woke on earth, we were.

Long, long since, undower'd yet, our spirit Roam'd, ere birth, the treasuries of G.o.d; Saw the gifts, the powers it might inherit, Ask'd an outfit for its earthly road.

Then, as now, this tremulous, eager being Strain'd and long'd and grasp'd each gift it saw; Then, as now, a Power beyond our seeing Staved us back, and gave our choice the law.

Ah, whose hand that day through Heaven guided Man's new spirit, since it was not we?

Ah, who sway'd our choice, and who decided What our gifts, and what our wants should be?

For, alas! he left us each retaining Shreds of gifts which he refused in full.

Still these waste us with their hopeless straining, Still the attempt to use them proves them null.

And on earth we wander, groping, reeling; Powers stir in us, stir and disappear.

Ah! and he, who placed our master-feeling, Fail'd to place that master-feeling clear.

We but dream we have our wish'd-for powers, Ends we seek we never shall attain.

Ah! _some_ power exists there, which is ours?

_Some_ end is there, we indeed may gain?

DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago Heard it on the aegaean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea.