Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/951

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without,

Firm to their mark, not spent on other things, Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,

Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings

O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,

And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven 1 and we, Vague half-believers of our casual creeds,

Who never deeply felt, nor clearly wilPd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,

Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill'd;

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?

Yes, we await it; but it still delays,

And then we buffer; and amongst us One, Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne; And all his store of sad experience he

Lays bare of wretched days; Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, And how the dying spark of hope was fed, And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, And all his hourly varied anodynes.

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