Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/952

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

This for our wisest: and we others pine,

And wish the long unhappy dream would end,

And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear, With close-lipp'd Patience for our only friend,

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair:

But none has hope like thine. Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stra

Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,

Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, And every doubt long blown by time away.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames,

Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife

Fly hence, our contact fear' Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowcring wood '

Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern

From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade,

With a free onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silver'd 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 cars, From the dark dingles, to the nightingales.

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