Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/209

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a lonely villa, in a dell

Above the fragrant warm Provençal shore,

The dying Rachel in a chair they bore

Up the steep pine-plumed paths of the Estrelle,

And laid her in a stately room, where fell

The shadow of a marble Muse of yore,—

The rose-crowned queen of legendary lore,

Polymnia,—full on her death-bed. 'Twas well!

The fret and misery of our northern towns,

In this her life's last day, our poor, our pain,

Our jangle of false wits, our climate's frowns,

Do for this radiant Greek-souled artist cease:

Sole object of her dying eyes remain

The beauty and the glorious art of Greece.

from the blood of Israel's scattered race,

At a mean inn in German Aarau born,

To forms from antique Greece and Rome uptorn,

Tricked out with a Parisian speech and face,

Imparting life renewed, old classic grace;

Then soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn,

A-Kempis! her departing soul outworn,

While by her bedside Hebrew rites have place,—

Ah! not the radiant spirit of Greece alone

She had—one power, which made her breast its home,

In her, like us, there clashed, contending powers,

Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome.

The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours;

Her genius and her glory are her own.