Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/289

Rh Brilliant above me! And thou, fiery world,

That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount

Upon whose charred and quaking crust I stand,—

Thou, too, brimmest with life! the sea of cloud,

That heaves its white and billowy vapors up

To moat this isle of ashes from the world,

Lives; and that other fainter sea, far down,

O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams leads

To Etna's Lipareän sister-fires

And the long dusky line of Italy,—

That mild and luminous floor of waters lives,

With held-in joy swelling its heart: I only,

Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has failed,

I, who have not, like these, in solitude

Maintained courage and force, and in myself

Nursed an immortal vigor,—I alone

Am dead to life and joy, therefore I read

In all things my own deadness.

A long silence. He continues:—

Oh that I could glow like this mountain!

Oh that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea!

Oh that my soul were full of light as the stars!

Oh that it brooded over the world like the air!

But no, this heart will glow no more; thou art

A living man no more, Empedocles!

Nothing but a devouring flame of thought,—

But a naked, eternally restless mind!

After a pause:—

To the elements it came from,

Every thing will return,—

Our bodies to earth,

Our blood to water,