Like the wave.
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles: and then, 5
Both are laid in cold place,
In the grave.
Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral. 10
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Maz’d with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.
We count the hours: these dreams of ours, 15
False and hollow,
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smil’d and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end, 20
Shall we follow?
Desire
THOU, who dost dwell alone —
Thou, who dost know thine own —
Thou, to whom all are known
From the cradle to the grave —
Save, oh, save. 5
From the world’s temptations,
From tribulations;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep 10
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave;
Save, oh, save.
When the Soul, growing clearer,
Sees God no nearer: 15
When the Soul, mounting higher,
To God comes no nigher:
But the arch-fiend Pride
Mounts at her side,
Foiling her high emprize, 20
Sealing her eagle eyes,
And, when she fain would soar,
Makes idols to adore;
Changing the pure emotion
Of her high devotion, 25
To a skin-deep sense
Of her own eloquence:
Strong to deceive, strong to enslave —
Save, oh, save.
From the ingrain’d fashion 30
Of this earthly nature
That mars thy creature.
From grief, that is but passion;
From mirth, that is but feigning;
From tears, that bring no healing; 35
From wild and weak complaining;
Thine old strength revealing,
Save, oh, save.
From doubt, where all is double:
Where wise men are not strong: 40
Where comfort turns to trouble:
Where just men suffer wrong:
Where sorrow treads on joy:
Where sweet things soonest cloy:
Where faiths are built on dust: 45
Where Love is half mistrust,
Hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea;
Oh, set us free.
O let the false dream fly
Where our sick souls do lie 50
Tossing continually.
O where thy voice doth come
Let all doubts be dumb:
Let all words be mild:
All strifes be reconcil’d: 55
All pains beguil’d.
Light bring no blindness;
Love no unkindness;
Knowledge no ruin;
Fear no undoing. 60
From the cradle to tho grave.
Save, oh, save.
Stanzas on a Gipsy Child by the Sea-shore
DOUGLAS, ISLE OF MAN
WHO taught this pleading to unpractis’d eyes?
Who hid such import in an infant’s gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?
Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone; 5
The swinging waters, and the cluster’d pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.
But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain, 10
Nor weariness, the full-fed soul’s annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain:
Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mother’s breast, that knows not thee;
With eyes that sought thine eyes thou didst converse, 15
And that soul-searching vision fell on me.
Glooms that go deep as thine I have not known:
Moods of fantastic sadness, nothing worth.
Thy sorrow and thy calmness are thine own:
Glooms that enhance and glorify this earth. 20
What mood wears like complexion to thy woe? —
His, who in mountain glens, at noon of day,
Sits rapt, and hears the battle break below? —
Ah! thine was not the shelter, but the fray.
What exile’s, changing bitter thoughts with glad? 25
What seraph’s, in some alien planet born? —
No exile’s dream was ever half so sad,
Nor any angel’s sorrow so forlorn.
Is the calm thine of stoic souls, who weigh
Life well, and find it wanting, nor deplore: 30
But in disdainful silence turn away,
Stand mute, self-centred, stern, and dream no more?
Or do I wait, to hear some grey-hair’d king
Unravel all his many-colour’d lore:
Whose mind hath known all arts of governing, 35
Mus’d much, lov’d life a little, loath’d it more?
Down the pale cheek long lines of shadow slope
Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give —
Thou hast foreknown the vanity of hope,
Foreseen thy harvest — yet proceed’st to live. 40
O meek anticipant of that sure pain
Whose sureness grey-hair’d scholars hardly learn!
What wonder shall time breed, to swell thy strain?
What heavens, what earth, what suns shalt thou discern?
Ere the long night, whose stillness brooks no star, 45
Match that funereal aspect with her pall,
I think, thou wilt have fathom’d life too far,
Have known too much — or else forgotten all.
The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil
Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps: 50
Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale
Of grief, and eas’d us with a thousand sleeps.
Ah! not the nectarous poppy lovers use,
Not daily labour’s dull, Lethaean spring,
Oblivion in lost angels can infuse 55
Of the soil’d glory, and the trailing wing;
And though thou glean, what strenuous gleaners may,
In the throng’d fields where winning comes by strife;
And though the just sun gild, as all men pray,
Some reaches of thy storm-vext stream of life; 60
Though that blank sunshine blind thee: though the cloud
That sever’d the world’s march and thine, is gone:
Though ease dulls grace, and Wisdom be too proud
To halve a lodging that was all her own:
Once, ere the day decline, thou shalt discern, 65
Oh once, ere night, in thy success, thy chain.
Ere the long evening close, thou shalt return,
And wear this majesty of grief again.
The Hayswater Boat
A REGION desolate and wild,
Black, chafing water: and afloat,
And lonely as a truant child
In a waste wood, a single boat:
No mast, no sails are set thereon; 5
It moves, but never moveth on:
And welters like a human thing
Amid the wild waves weltering.
Behind, a buried vale doth sleep,
Far down the torrent cleaves its way: 10
; In front the dumb rock rises steep,
A fretted wall of blue and grey;
Of shooting cliff and crumbled stone
With many a wild weed overgrown:
All else, black water: and afloat, 15
One rood from shore, that single boat.
Last night the wind was up and strong;
The grey-streak’d waters labour still:
The strong blast brought a pigmy throng
From that mild hollow in the hill; 20
From those twin brooks, that beachèd strand
So featly strewn with drifted sand;
From those weird domes of mounded green
That spot the solitary scene.
This boat they found against the shore: 25
The glossy rushes nodded by.
One rood from land they push’d, no more;
Then rested, listening silently.
The loud rains lash’d the mountain’s crown,
The grating shingle straggled down; 30
All night they sate; then stole away,
And left it rocking in the bay.
Last night? — I look’d, the sky was clear.
The boat was old, a batter’d boat.
In sooth, it seems a hundred year 35
Since that strange crew did ride afloat.
The boat hath drifted in the bay —
The oars have moulder’d as they lay —
The rudder swings — yet none doth steer.
What living hand hath brought it here? 40
The Forsaken Merman
COME, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shorewards blow;
Now the salt tides seawards flow; 5
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way.
Call her once before you go. 10
Call once yet.
In a voice that she will know:
‘Margaret! Margaret!’
Children’s voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother’s ear: 15
Children’s voices, wild with pain.
Surely she will come again.
Call her once and come away.
This way, this way.
‘Mother dear, we cannot stay.’ 20
The wild white horses foam and fret.
Margaret! Margaret!
Come, dear children, come away down,
Call no more.
One last look at the white-wall’d town, 25
And the little grey church on the windy shore.
Then come down.
She will not come though you call all day.
Come away, come away.
Children dear, was it yesterday 30
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, 35
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam;
Where the salt weed sways in the stream;
Where the sea-beasts rang’d all round
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; 40
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye? 45
When did music come this way?
Children dear, was it yesterday?
Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me, 50
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb’d its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.
She sigh’d, she look’d up through the clear green sea. 55
She said; ‘I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
‘Twill be Easter-time in the world — ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.
I said; ‘Go up, dear heart, through the waves; 60
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.’
She smil’d, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?
Children dear, were we long alone?
‘The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan. 65
Long prayers,’ I said, ‘in the world they say.
Come,’ I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall’d town.
Through the narrow pav’d streets, where all was still, 70
To the little grey church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.
We climb’d on the graves, on the stones, worn with rains,
And we gaz’d up the aisle through the small leaded panes. 75
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
‘Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.
Dear heart,’ I said, ‘we are long alone.
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.’
But, ah, she gave me never a look, 80
For her eyes were seal’d to the holy book.
‘Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.’
Come away, children, call no more.
Come away, come down, call no more.
Down, down, down. 85
Down to the depths of the sea.
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark, what she sings; ‘O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy. 90
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.
For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun.’
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully, 95
Till the shuttle falls from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare; 100
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh, 105
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
And the gleam of her golden hair.
Come away, away children.
Come children, come down.
The hoarse wind blows colder; 110
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar. 115
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing, ‘Here came a mortal, 120
But faithless was she.
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.’
But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow; 125
When clear falls the moonlight;
When spring-tides are low:
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr’d with broom;
And high rocks throw mildly 130
On the blanch’d sands a gloom:
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie;
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry. 135
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side —
And then come back down.
Singing, ‘There dwells a lov’d one, 140
But cruel is she.
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.’
The World and the Quietist
TO CRITIAS
Why, when the World’s great mind
Hath finally inclin’d,
Why, you say, Critias, be debating still?
Why, with these mournful rhymes
Learn’d in more languid climes, 5
Blame our activity,
Who, with such passionate will,
Arc, what we mean to be?
Critias, long since, I know,
(For Fate decreed it so,) 10
Long since the World hath set its heart to live.
Long since with credulous zeal
It turns Life’s mighty wheel;
Still doth for labourers send,
Who still their labour give; 15
And still expects an end.
Yet, as the wheel flies round,
With no ungrateful sound
Do adverse voices fall on the World’s ear.
Deafen’d by his own stir 20
The rugged Labourer
Caught not till then a sense
So glowing and so near
Of his omnipotence.
So, when the feast grew loud 25
In Susa’s palace proud,
A white-rob’d slave stole to the Monarch’s side.
He spoke: the Monarch heard:
Felt the slow-rolling word
Swell his attentive soul. 30
Breath’d deeply as it died,
And drain’d his mighty bowl.
In utrumque paratus
IF, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
At first imagin’d lay
The sacred world; and by procession sure
From those still deeps, in form and colour drest,
Seasons alternating, and night and day, 5
The long-mus’d thought to north south east and west
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 5