Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/955

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves!

Again thou hearest! Eternal Passion' Eternal Pain!

762 Shakespeare


 * THERS 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 stais 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 foil'd searching of mortality; And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school 'd, sclf-scann'd, sclf-honour'd, self-secure, Didst walk on earth unguess'd 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.

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��763 From the Hymn of Emfedocles

[S it so small a thing

To have enjoy'd the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done ; To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;

That we must feign a bliss Of doubtful future date, And while we dream on this

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