Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of

heaven,

Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

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In the rustling night-air came the answer: "Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they, 16

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

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"And with joy the stars perform their shining,

And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
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 mine own heart I hear: "Resolve to be thyself; and know that he, Who finds himself, loses his misery!"

1852.

Matthew Arnold.

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THE FUTURE

A WANDERER is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship

On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming 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 pass,

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

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He wots of; only the thoughts,

Raised by the objects he passes, 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 sunshine, 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 God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,

As flashing 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 shore.
Border'd by cities and hoarse

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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 ennobling 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 shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush

Of the gray expanse where he floats,

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Freshening its current and spotted with foam 80 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.

1852.

Matthew Arnold.

PALLADIUM

SET where the upper streams of Simois flow Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood; And Hector was in Ilium, far below,

And fought, and saw it not-but there it stood! 4

It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light

On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight Round Troy-but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
Mountains surround it and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

We shall renew the battle in the plain
To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be:
Hector and Ajax will be there again,
Helen will come upon the wall to see.

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