In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.’
O air-born Voice! long since, severely clear,
A cry like thine in my own heart I hear. 30
‘Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.’
A Summer Night
IN the deserted moon-blanch’d street
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world: — but see! 5
A break between the housetops shows
The moon, and, lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon’s rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose. 10
And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene.
Headlands stood out into the moon-lit deep
As clearly as at noon; 15
The spring-tide’s brimming flow
Heav’d dazzlingly between;
Houses with long white sweep
Girdled the glistening bay:
Behind, through the soft air, 20
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair;
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly-throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright calm moon. 25
And the calm moonlight seems to say —
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast
That neither deadens into rest
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away, 30
But fluctuates to and fro
Never by passion quite possess’d
And never quite benumb’d by the world’s sway? —
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield, and be 35
Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where in the sun’s hot eye,
With heads bent o’er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, 40
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
Fresh products of their barren labour fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near, 45
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest. 50
And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison, and depart
On the wide Ocean of Life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where’er his heart
Listeth, will sail; 55
Nor does he know how there prevail,
Despotic on life’s sea,
Trade-winds that cross it from eternity.
A while he holds some false way, undebarr’d
By thwarting signs, and braves 60
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him, and between
The lightning bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale Master on his spar-strewn deck 65
With anguish’d face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar 70
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.
Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one? 75
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
Clearness divine!
Ye Heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate: 80
Who though so noble share in the world’s toil,
And though so task’d keep free from dust and soil:
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have long’d deeply once, and long’d in vain; 85
But I will rather say that you remain
A world above man’s head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul’s horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency.
How it were good to sink there, and breathe free. 90
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still.
The Buried Life
LIGHT flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears my eyes are wet.
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile; 5
But there’s a something in this breast
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine, 10
And let me read there, love, thy inmost soul.
Alas, is even Love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel? 15
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reprov’d:
I knew they liv’d and mov’d 20
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast.
But we, my love — does a like spell benumb
Our hearts — our voices? — must we too be dumb? 25
Ah, well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d:
For that which seals them hath been deep ordain’d.
Fate, which foresaw 30
How frivolous a baby man would be,
By what distractions he would be possess’d,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity;
That it might keep from his capricious play 35
His genuine self, and force him to obey,
Even in his own despite, his being’s law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded River of our Life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; 40
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying about in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, 45
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life,
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course; 50
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart that beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our thoughts come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves, 55
But deep enough, alas, none ever mines:
And we have been on many thousand lines,
/> And we have shown on each talent and power,
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves; 60
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress’d.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do 65
Is eloquent, is well — but ‘tis not true:
And then we will no more be rack’d
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power; 70
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call:
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey 75
A melancholy into all our day.
Only — but this is rare —
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours, 80
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a lov’d voice caress’d, —
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again: 85
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur, and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 90
And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, Rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. 95
And then he thinks he knows
The Hills where his life rose,
And the Sea where it goes.
A Farewell
MY horse’s feet beside the lake,
Where sweet the unbroken moonbeams lay,
Sent echoes through the night to wake
Each glistening strand, each heath-fring’d bay.
The poplar avenue was pass’d, 5
And the roof’d bridge that spans the stream.
Up the steep street I hurried fast,
Led by thy taper’s starlike beam.
I came; I saw thee rise: — the blood
Came flushing to thy languid cheek. 10
Lock’d in each other’s arms we stood,
In tears, with hearts too full to speak.
Days flew: ah, soon I could discern
A trouble in thine alter’d air.
Thy hand lay languidly in mine — 15
Thy cheek was grave, thy speech grew rare.
I blame thee net: — this heart, I know,
To be long lov’d was never fram’d;
For something in its depths doth glow
Too strange, too restless, too untam’d. 20
And women — things that live and move
Min’d by the fever of the soul —
They seek to find in those they love
Stern strength, and promise of control.
They ask not kindness, gentle ways; 25
These they themselves have tried and known:
They ask a soul that never sways
With the blind gusts which shake their own.
I too have felt the load I bore
In a too strong emotion’s sway; 30
I too have wish’d, no woman more,
This starting, feverish heart, away:
I too have long’d for trenchant force
And will like a dividing spear;
Have prais’d the keen, unscrupulous course, 35
Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.
But in the world I learnt, what there
Thou too wilt surely one day prove,
That will, that energy, though rare,
Are yet far, far less rare than love. 40
Go then! till Time and Fate impress
This truth on thee, be mine no more!
They will: for thou, I feel, no less
Than I, wert destin’d to this lore.
We school our manners, act our parts: 45
But He, who sees us through and through,
Knows that the bent of both our hearts
Was to be gentle, tranquil, true.
And though we wear out life, alas,
Distracted as a homeless wind, 50
In beating where we must not pass,
In seeking what we shall not find;
Yet we shall one day gain, life past,
Clear prospect o’er our being’s whole;
Shall see ourselves, and learn at last 55
Our true affinities of soul.
We shall not then deny a course
To every thought the mass ignore;
We shall not then call hardness force,
Nor lightness wisdom any more. 60
Then, in the eternal Father’s smile,
Our sooth’d, encourag’d souls will dare
To seem as free from pride and guile,
As good, as generous, as they are.
Then we shall know our friends: though much 65
Will have been lost — the help in strife;
The thousand sweet still joys of such
As hand in hand face earthly life; —
Though these be lost, there will be yet
A sympathy august and pure; 70
Ennobled by a vast regret,
And by contrition seal’d thrice sure.
And we, whose ways were unlike here,
May then more neighbouring courses ply;
May to each other be brought near, 75
And greet across infinity.
How sweet, unreach’d by earthly jars,
My sister! to behold with thee
The hush among the shining stars,
The calm upon the moonlit sea. 80
How sweet to feel, on the boon air,
All our unquiet pulses cease;
To feel that nothing can impair
The gentleness, the thirst for peace —
The gentleness too rudely hurl’d 85
On this wild earth of hate and fear:
The thirst for peace a raving world
Would never let us satiate here.
Obermann
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 5
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. 10
— 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, 15
Which brooded o’er thy soul.
Fly hence, poor Wretch, whoe’er thou art,
Condemn’d to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without: 20
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 25
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, 30
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 35
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? 40
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 45
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; 50
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 55
May think to emulate.
For he pursued a lonely road,
His eyes on Nature’s plan;
Neither made man too much a God,
Nor God too much a man. 60
Strong was he, with a spirit free
From mists, and sane, and clear;
Clearer, how much! than ours: yet we
Have a worse course to steer.
For though his manhood bore the blast 65
Of Europe’s stormiest time,
Yet in a tranquil world was pass’d
His tenderer youthful prime.
But we, brought forth and rear’d in hours
Of change, alarm, surprise — 70
What shelter to grow ripe is ours?
What leisure to grow wise?
Like children bathing on the shore,
Buried a wave beneath,
The second wave succeeds, before 75
We have had time to breathe.
Too fast we live, too much are tried,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Page 14