367

MORALITY

We cannot kindle when we will
The fire which in the heart resides,
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides ;

But tasks in hours of insight will'd

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Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.

With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone

We bear the burden and the heat

Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return
All we have built do we discern.

Then, when the clouds are off the soul,
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye,
Ask, how she view'd thy self-control,
Thy struggling, task'd morality

Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air,
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.

And she, whose censure thou dost dread,
Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek,
See, on her face a glow is spread,
A strong emotion on her cheek!

Ah, child!' she cries, that strife divine,
Whence was it, for it is not mine?

'There is no effort on my brow—
I do not strive, I do not weep;

I rush with the swift spheres and glow
In joy, and, when I will, I sleep!

Yet that severe, that earnest air,
I saw, I felt it once-but where?

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'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.
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 clos'd. Only the tract where he sails

He wots of; only the thoughts,

Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

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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? 30
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?

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This tract which the river of Time

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Now flows through with us, is the plain.

Gone is the calm of its earlier shore.
Border'd by cities, and hoarse

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,

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Flatter the plain where it flows,
Fiercer the sun overhead.

That never will those on its breast
See an ennobling sight,

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Drink of the feeling of quiet again.

But what was before us we know not,
And we know not what shall succeed.

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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 grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
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.

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369

PHILOMELA

M. ARNOLD.

Hark! ah, the nightingale !

The tawny-throated!

Hark! 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 bewilder'd brain

That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world

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pain

Say, will it never heal?

Ра

And can this fragrant lawn
With its cool trees, and night,
And the sweet, tranquil Thames,
And moonshine, and the dew,
To thy rack'd heart and brain
Afford no balm ?

Dost thou to-night behold,

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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

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The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame?

Dost thou once more assay

Thy flight, and feel come over thee,
Poor fugitive, the feathery change

Once more, and once more seem to make resound
With love and hate, triumph and agony,

Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?

Listen, Eugenia

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How thick the bursts come crowding through the

leaves !

Again-thou hearest?

Eternal passion!

Eternal pain!

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M. ARNOLD.

370

REQUIESCAT

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.

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