Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/226

188 Or is it over? art thou dead?—

Dead!—and no warning shiver ran

Across my heart, to say thy thread

Of life was cut, and closed thy span!

Could from earth's ways that figure slight

Be lost, and I not feel 'twas so?

Of that fresh voice the gay delight

Fail from earth's air, and I not know?

Or shall I find thee still, but changed,

But not the Marguerite of thy prime?

With all thy being re-arranged,—

Passed through the crucible of time;

With spirit vanished, beauty waned,

And hardly yet a glance, a tone,

A gesture—any thing—retained

Of all that was my Marguerite's own?

I will not know! For wherefore try,

To things by mortal course that live,

A shadowy durability,

For which they were not meant, to give?

Like driftwood spars, which meet and pass

Upon the boundless ocean-plain,

So on the sea of life, alas!

Man meets man,—meets, and quits again.

I knew it when my life was young;

I feel it still now youth is o'er.

—The mists are on the mountain hung,

And Marguerite I shall see no more.