Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/223

Rh Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved

How vain a thing is mortal love,

Wandering in heaven, far removed;

But thou hast long had place to prove

This truth,—to prove, and make thine own:

"Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone."

Or, if not quite alone, yet they

Which touch thee are unmating things,—

Ocean and clouds and night and day;

Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;

And life, and others' joy and pain,

And love, if love, of happier men.

Of happier men; for they, at least,

Have dreamed two human hearts might blend

In one, and were through faith released

From isolation without end

Prolonged; nor knew, although not less

Alone than thou, their loneliness.

! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,

And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,

And they are swept by balms of spring,

And in their glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing;

And lovely notes, from shore to shore,

Across the sounds and channels pour,—