Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Part 37

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.

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, 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, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pa.s.s!

The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, The night comes down upon the gra.s.s, 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.

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.

A WISH

I ask not that my bed of death From bands of greedy heirs be free; For these besiege the latest breath Of fortune's favour'd sons, not me.

I ask not each kind soul to keep Tearless, when of my death he hears.

Let those who will, if any, weep!

There are worse plagues on earth than tears.

I ask but that my death may find The freedom to my life denied; Ask but the folly of mankind Then, then at last, to quit my side.

Spare me the whispering, crowded room, The friends who come, and gape, and go; The ceremonious air of gloom-- All, which makes death a hideous show!

Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head, and give The ill he cannot cure a name.

Nor fetch, to take the accustom'd toll Of the poor sinner bound for death, His brother-doctor of the soul, To canva.s.s with official breath

The future and its viewless things-- That undiscover'd mystery Which one who feels death's winnowing wings Must needs read clearer, sure, than he!

Bring none of these; but let me be, While all around in silence lies, Moved to the window near, and see Once more, before my dying eyes,

Bathed in the sacred dews of morn The wide aerial landscape spread-- The world which was ere I was born, The world which lasts when I am dead;

Which never was the friend of _one_, Nor promised love it could not give, But lit for all its generous sun, And lived itself, and made us live.

There let me gaze, till I become In soul, with what I gaze on, wed!

To feel the universe my home; To have before my mind--instead

Of the sick room, the mortal strife, The turmoil for a little breath-- The pure eternal course of life, Not human combatings with death!

Thus feeling, gazing, might I grow Composed, refresh'd, enn.o.bled, clear; Then willing let my spirit go To work or wait elsewhere or here!

THE FUTURE

A wanderer is man from his birth.

He was born in a s.h.i.+p On the breast of the river of Time; Br.i.m.m.i.n.g with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.

Whether he wakes, Where the snowy mountainous pa.s.s, Echoing the screams of the eagles, Hems in its gorges the bed Of the new-born clear-flowing stream; Whether he first sees light Where the river in gleaming rings Sluggishly winds through the plain; Whether in sound of the swallowing sea-- As is the world on the banks, So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides, Fable and dream Of the lands which the river of Time Had left ere he woke on its breast, Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.

Only the tract where he sails He wots of; only the thoughts, Raised by the objects he pa.s.ses, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more As she was by the sources of Time?

Who imagines her fields as they lay In the suns.h.i.+ne, unworn by the plough?

Who thinks as they thought, The tribes who then roam'd on her breast, Her vigorous, primitive sons?

What girl Now reads in her bosom as clear As Rebekah read, when she sate At eve by the palm-shaded well?

Who guards in her breast As deep, as pellucid a spring Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure?

What bard, At the height of his vision, can deem Of G.o.d, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flas.h.i.+ng as Moses felt When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste?

Can rise and obey The beck of the Spirit like him?

This tract which the river of Time Now flows through with us, is the plain.

Gone is the calm of its earlier sh.o.r.e.

Border'd by cities and hoa.r.s.e With a thousand cries is its stream.

And we on its breast, our minds Are confused as the cries which we hear, Changing and shot as the sights which we see.

And we say that repose has fled For ever the course of the river of Time.

That cities will crowd to its edge In a blacker, incessanter line; That the din will be more on its banks, Denser the trade on its stream, Flatter the plain where it flows, Fiercer the sun overhead.

That never will those on its breast See an enn.o.bling sight, Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not, And we know not what shall succeed.

Haply, the river of Time-- As it grows, as the towns on its marge Fling their wavering lights On a wider, statelier stream-- May acquire, if not the calm Of its early mountainous sh.o.r.e, Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush Of the grey expanse where he floats, Freshening its current and spotted with foam As it draws to the Ocean, may strike Peace to the soul of the man on its breast-- As the pale waste widens around him, As the banks fade dimmer away, As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.

ELEGIAC POEMS