Collected English Verse — Matthew Arnold. b. 1822, d. 1888 (Part 8 of 9)

in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil’d searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school’d, self- scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,
Didst walk on earth unguess’d, at. Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
  All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
  Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

763   From the Hymn of Empedocles

        IS it so small a thing
        To have enjoy’d the sun,
        To have lived light in the spring,
        To have loved, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;

        That we must feign a bliss
        Of doubtful future date,
        And while we dream on this
        Lose all our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?

        Not much, I know, you prize
        What pleasures may be had,
        Who look on life with eyes
        Estranged, like mine, and sad:
And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you;

        Who’s loth to leave this life
        Which to him little yields:
        His hard-task’d sunburnt wife,
        His often- labour’d fields;
The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew.

        But thou, because thou hear’st
        Men scoff at Heaven and Fate;
        Because the gods thou fear’st
        Fail to make blest thy state,
Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.

        I say, Fear not! life still
        Leaves human effort scope.
        But, since life teems with ill,
        Nurse no extravagant hope.
Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair.

764   The Strayed Reveller to Ulysses

THE Gods are happy.
They turn on all sides
Their shining eyes:
And see, below them,
The Earth, and men.
They see Tiresias
Sitting, staff in hand,
On the warm, grassy
Asopus’ bank:
His robe drawn over
His old, sightless head:
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.

They see the Centaurs
In the upper glens
Of Pelion, in the streams,
Where red-berried ashes fringe
The clear-brown shallow pools;
With streaming flanks, and heads
Rear’d proudly, snuffing
The mountain wind.

They see the Indian
Drifting, knife in hand,
His frail boat moor’d to
A floating isle thick matted
With large-leav’d, low-creeping melon-plants,
And the dark cucumber.
He reaps, and stows them,
Drifting—drifting:—round him,
Round his green harvest-plot,
Flow the cool lake-waves:
The mountains ring them.

They see the Scythian
On the wide Stepp, unharnessing
His wheel’d house at noon.
He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal.

Mares’ milk, and bread
Bak’d on the embers:—all around
The boundless waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starr’d
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock
And flag-leav’d iris flowers.
Sitting in his cart
He makes his meal: before him, for long miles,
Alive with bright green lizards,
And the springing bustard fowl,
The track, a straight black line,
Furrows the rich soil: here and there
Clusters of lonely mounds
Topp’d with rough- hewn,
Grey, rain-blear’d statues, overpeer
The sunny Waste.

They see the Ferry
On the broad, clay-laden
Lone Chorasmian stream: thereon,
With snort and strain,
Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
To either bow
Firm-harness’d by the mane:—a Chief,
With shout and shaken spear
Stands at the prow, and guides them: but astern,
The cowering Merchants, in long robes,
Sit pale beside their wealth
Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
Of gold and ivory,
Of turquoise-earth and amethyst,
Jasper and chalcedony,
And milk-barr’d onyx stones.
The loaded boat swings groaning
In the yellow eddies.
The Gods behold them.