Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/296

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The epoch ends, the world is still.

The age has talked and worked its fill.

The famous orators have shone,

The famous poets sung and gone,

The famous men of war have fought,

The famous speculators thought,

The famous players, sculptors, wrought,

The famous painters filled their wall,

The famous critics judged it all.

The combatants are parted now;

Uphung the spear, unbent the bow,

The puissant crowned, the weak laid low.

And in the after-silence sweet,

Now strifes are hushed, our ears doth meet,

Ascending pure, the bell-like fame

Of this or that down-trodden name,

Delicate spirits, pushed away

In the hot press of the noonday.

And o'er the plain, where the dead age

Did its now-silent warfare wage,—

O'er that wide plain, now wrapped in gloom,

Where many a splendor finds its tomb,

Many spent fames and fallen nights—

The one or two immortal lights

Rise slowly up into the sky,

To shine there everlastingly,

Like stars over the bounding hill.

The epoch ends, the world is still.

Thundering and bursting

In torrents, in waves,

Carolling and shouting