367 MORALITY We cannot kindle when we will But tasks in hours of insight will'd 5 Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd. With aching hands and bleeding feet We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Then, when the clouds are off the soul, Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air, And she, whose censure thou dost dread, Ah, child!' she cries, that strife divine, 'There is no effort on my brow— I rush with the swift spheres and glow Yet that severe, that earnest air, 10 15 20 25 30 'I knew not yet the gauge of time, Nor wore the manacles of space; I felt it in some other clime! I saw it in some other place! 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, 35 And lay upon the breast of God.' M. ARNOLD. 368 THE FUTURE A wanderer is man from his birth. On the breast of the river of Time; 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. Where the snowy mountainous pass, Of the new-born clear-flowing stream; Whether he first sees light Where the river in gleaming rings 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 clos'd. Only the tract where he sails He wots of; only the thoughts, Raised by the objects he passes, are his. 5 10 15 20 25 Who can see the green earth any more In the sunshine, unworn by the plough? 30 The tribes who then roam'd on her breast, Her vigorous primitive sons? What girl Now reads in her bosom as clear As deep, as pellucid a spring What bard, At the height of his vision, can deem 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? 35 40 45 This tract which the river of Time 50 Now flows through with us, is the plain. Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. With a thousand cries is its stream. 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. In a blacker incessanter line; That the din will be more on its banks, 55 60 Flatter the plain where it flows, That never will those on its breast 65 Drink of the feeling of quiet again. But what was before us we know not, 70 Haply, the river of Time, As it grows, as the towns on its marge And the width of the waters, the hush Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea. 75 81 $5 369 PHILOMELA M. ARNOLD. Hark! ah, the nightingale ! The tawny-throated! Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst ! O wanderer from a Grecian shore, That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world 133 pain Say, will it never heal? Ра And can this fragrant lawn Dost thou to-night behold, 10 15 Here, through the moonlight on this English grass, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Dost thou again peruse With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes 20 The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more assay Thy flight, and feel come over thee, Once more, and once more seem to make resound Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale? Listen, Eugenia 26 How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves ! Again-thou hearest? Eternal passion! Eternal pain! 30 M. ARNOLD. 370 REQUIESCAT Strew on her roses, roses, In quiet she reposes; Ah! would that I did too. Her mirth the world required; 5 |