Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Part 44

Their faith, my tears, the world deride-- I come to shed them at their side.

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, Ye solemn seats of holy pain!

Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round, Till I possess my soul again; Till free my thoughts before me roll, Not chafed by hourly false control!

For the world cries your faith is now But a dead time's exploded dream; My melancholy, sciolists say, Is a pa.s.s'd mode, an outworn theme-- As if the world had ever had A faith, or sciolists been sad!

Ah, if it _be_ pa.s.s'd, take away, At least, the restlessness, the pain; Be man henceforth no more a prey To these out-dated stings again!

The n.o.bleness of grief is gone-- Ah, leave us not the fret alone!

But--if you cannot give us ease-- Last of the race of them who grieve Here leave us to die out with these Last of the people who believe!

Silent, while years engrave the brow; Silent--the best are silent now.

Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb; Silent they are, though not content, And wait to see the future come.

They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more.

Our fathers water'd with their tears This sea of time whereon we sail, Their voices were in all men's ears Who pa.s.s'd within their puissant hail.

Still the same ocean round us raves, But we stand mute, and watch the waves.

For what avail'd it, all the noise And outcry of the former men?-- Say, have their sons achieved more joys, Say, is life lighter now than then?

The sufferers died, they left their pain-- The pangs which tortured them remain.

What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart, Through Europe to the aetolian sh.o.r.e The pageant of his bleeding heart?

That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?

What boots it, Sh.e.l.ley! that the breeze Carried thy lovely wail away, Musical through Italian trees Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?

Inheritors of thy distress Have restless hearts one throb the less?

Or are we easier, to have read, O Obermann! the sad, stern page, Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head From the fierce tempest of thine age In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau, Or chalets near the Alpine snow?

Ye slumber in your silent grave!-- The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away.

The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we--we learnt your lore too well!

Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.

Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; But, while we wait, allow our tears!

Allow them! We admire with awe The exulting thunder of your race; You give the universe your law, You triumph over time and s.p.a.ce!

Your pride of life, your tireless powers, We laud them, but they are not ours.

We are like children rear'd in shade Beneath some old-world abbey wall, Forgotten in a forest-glade, And secret from the eyes of all.

Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves, Their abbey, and its close of graves!

But, where the road runs near the stream, Oft through the trees they catch a glance Of pa.s.sing troops in the sun's beam-- Pennon, and plume, and flas.h.i.+ng lance!

Forth to the world those soldiers fare, To life, to cities, and to war!

And through the wood, another way, Faint bugle-notes from far are borne, Where hunters gather, staghounds bay, Round some fair forest-lodge at morn.

Gay dames are there, in sylvan green; Laughter and cries--those notes between!

The banners flas.h.i.+ng through the trees Make their blood dance and chain their eyes That bugle-music on the breeze Arrests them with a charm'd surprise.

Banner by turns and bugle woo: _Ye shy recluses, follow too!_

O children, what do ye reply?-- "Action and pleasure, will ye roam Through these secluded dells to cry And call us?--but too late ye come!

Too late for us your call ye blow, Whose bent was taken long ago.

"Long since we pace this shadow'd nave; We watch those yellow tapers s.h.i.+ne, Emblems of hope over the grave, In the high altar's depth divine; The organ carries to our ear Its accents of another sphere.

"Fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer, How should we grow in other ground?

How can we flower in foreign air?

--Pa.s.s, banners, pa.s.s, and bugles, cease; And leave our desert to its peace!"

STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF "OBERMANN"[25]

NOVEMBER, 1849

In front the awful Alpine track Crawls up its rocky stair; The autumn storm-winds drive the rack, Close o'er it, in the air.

Behind are the abandon'd baths[26]

Mute in their meadows lone; The leaves are on the valley-paths, The mists are on the Rhone--

The white mists rolling like a sea!

I hear the torrents roar.

--Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee; I feel thee near once more!

I turn thy leaves! I feel their breath Once more upon me roll; That air of languor, cold, and death, Which brooded o'er thy soul.

Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe'er thou art, Condemn'd to cast about, All s.h.i.+pwreck in thy own weak heart, For comfort from without!

A fever in these pages burns Beneath the calm they feign; A wounded human spirit turns, Here, on its bed of pain.

Yes, though the virgin mountain-air Fresh through these pages blows; Though to these leaves the glaciers spare The soul of their white snows;

Though here a mountain-murmur swells Of many a dark-bough'd pine; Though, as you read, you hear the bells Of the high-pasturing kine--

Yet, through the hum of torrent lone, And brooding mountain-bee, There sobs I know not what ground-tone Of human agony.

Is it for this, because the sound Is fraught too deep with pain, That, Obermann! the world around So little loves thy strain?

Some secrets may the poet tell, For the world loves new ways; To tell too deep ones is not well-- It knows not what he says.

Yet, of the spirits who have reign'd In this our troubled day, I know but two, who have attain'd, Save thee, to see their way.

By England's lakes, in grey old age, His quiet home one keeps; And one, the strong much-toiling sage, In German Weimar sleeps.

But Wordsworth's eyes avert their ken From half of human fate; And Goethe's course few sons of men May think to emulate.

For he pursued a lonely road, His eyes on Nature's plan; Neither made man too much a G.o.d, Nor G.o.d too much a man.