Up the creeks we will hie;
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
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 loved one,
But cruel is she.
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.'
HARK! ah, the Nightingale! The tawny-throated!
from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark-what pain!
O Wanderer from a Grecian shore, Still, after many years, in distant lands,
Still nourishing in thy bewildered brain
That wild, unquenched, deep-
sunken, old-world pain-
Say, will it never heal?
And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet tranquil Thames,
And moonshine and the dew,
To thy racked heart and brain
Afford no balm ?
Dost thou to-night behold
Here, through the moonlight on
this English grass,
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
like mine, and
sad:
And yet the village churl feels the
truth more than you,
Who's loath to leave this life
Which to him little yields:
His hard-tasked sunburnt wife,
His often-laboured fields;
The boors with whom he talked,
the country spots he knew.
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!
M. ARNOLD.
OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill
That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foiled searching of mortality :
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self-secure,
Didst walk on Earth unguessed 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.
M. ARNOLD.
STREW on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.
Her mirth the world required:
She bathed it in smiles of
glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearn-
ing,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabined, ample Spirit,
It fluttered and failed for breath.
To-night it doth inherit
The vasty Hall of Death.
M. ARNOLD.
13. FROM THE SCHOLAR GIPSY'
THOU waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?
Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,
With a free onward impulse brushing through,
By night, the silvered branches of the glade-
Far on the forest skirts, where none pursue,
On some mild pastoral slope
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,
Freshen thy flowers as in former years
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales !
But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest.
Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.
Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
-As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow
Among the Aegean isles;
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine;
And knew the intruders on his ancient home,
The young light-hearted masters of the waves;
And snatched his rudder, and shook out more sail;
And day and night held on indignantly
O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,
To where the Atlantic raves
Outside the western straits; and unbent sails
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
And on the beach undid his corded bales.
And that far purple mountain line
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;
So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent
hue-
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.
Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this river's
flow,
Were restless once, but long ago.
Tamed is their turbulent youthful
glow:
Their joy is in their calm.
M. ARNOLD.
'Tis Apollo comes leading
His choir, the Nine.
-The Leader is fairest,
But all are divine.
They are lost in the hollows,
They stream up again.
What seeks on this mountain
The glorified train ?—
They bathe on this mountain
In the spring by their road.
Then on to Olympus,
Their endless abode.
-Whose praise do they mention,
Of what is it told ?-
What will be for ever,
What was from of old.
First hymn they the Father
Of all things: and then
The rest of Immortals,
The action of men.
The Day in its hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The Night in its silence,
The Stars in their calm.
M. ARNOLD (Empedocles on Etna).
17. I'LL LOVE NO MORE
I LOVED thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain :
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away!
Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou hadst still continued mine;
Yea, if thou hadst remained thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom didst recall,
That, if thou might, elsewhere inthrall:
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain ? SIR R. AYTON.
FROM THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE'
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