Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/261

Rh Was subject to these trances from a girl.

Empedocles would say so, did he deign;

But he still lets the people, whom he scorns,

Gape and cry wizard at him, if they list.

But thou, thou art no company for him:

Thou art as cross, as soured as himself.

Thou hast some wrong from thine own citizens,

And then thy friend is banished; and on that,

Straightway thou fallest to arraign the times,

As if the sky was impious not to fall.

The sophists are no enemies of his;

I hear, Gorgias, their chief, speaks nobly of him,

As of his gifted master, and once friend.

He is too scornful, too high-wrought, too bitter.

'Tis not the times, 'tis not the sophists, vex him:

There is some root of suffering in himself,

Some secret and unfollowed vein of woe,

Which makes the time look black and sad to him.

Pester him not, in this his sombre mood,

With questionings about an idle tale,

But lead him through the lovely mountain paths,

And keep his mind from preying on itself,

And talk to him of things at hand and common,

Not miracles! thou art a learned man,

But credulous of fables as a girl.

PAUSANIAS.

And thou, a boy whose tongue outruns his knowledge,

And on whose lightness blame is thrown away.

Enough of this! I see the litter wind

Up by the torrent-side, under the pines.

I must rejoin Empedocles. Do thou

Crouch in the brushwood till the mules have passed;

Then play thy kind part well. Farewell till night!