Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/286

248 But can life reach him?

Thou fencest him from the multitude:

Who will fence him from himself?

He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents,

And the beating of his own heart;

The air is thin, the veins swell,

The temples tighten and throb there—

Air! air!

Take thy bough, set me free from my solitude;

I have been enough alone!

Where shall thy votary fly, then? back to men?

But they will gladly welcome him once more,

And help him to unbend his too tense thought,

And rid him of the presence of himself,

And keep their friendly chatter at his ear,

And haunt him, till the absence from himself,

That other torment, grow unbearable;

And he will fly to solitude again,

And he will find its air too keen for him,

And so change back; and many thousand times

Be miserably bandied to and fro

Like a sea-wave, betwixt the world and thee,

Thou young, implacable god! and only death

Shall cut his oscillations short, and so

Bring him to poise. There is no other way.

And yet what days were those, Parmenides!

When we were young, when we could number friends

In all the Italian cities like ourselves;

When with elated hearts we joined your train,

Ye Sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth.16

Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought

Nor outward things were closed and dead to us;

But we received the shock of mighty thoughts