Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/299

Rh And nobly perfect, in our day

Of haste, half-work, and disarray,

Profound yet touching, sweet yet strong,

Hath risen Goethe's, Wordsworth's song;

Yet even I (and none will bow

Deeper to these) must needs allow,

They yield us not, to soothe our pains,

Such multitude of heavenly strains

As from the kings of sound are blown,—

Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn."

While thus my friend discoursed, we pass

Out of the path, and take the grass.

The grass had still the green of May,

And still the unblackened elms were gay;

The kine were resting in the shade,

The flies a summer murmur made.

Bright was the morn, and south the air;

The soft-couched cattle were as fair

As those which pastured by the sea,

That old-world morn, in Sicily,

When on the beach the Cyclops lay,

And Galatea from the bay

Mocked her poor lovelorn giant's lay.

"Behold," I said, "the painter's sphere!

The limits of his art appear.

The passing group, the summer morn,

The grass, the elms, that blossomed thorn,—

Those cattle couched, or, as they rise,

Their shining flanks, their liquid eyes,—

These, or much greater things, but caught

Like these, and in one aspect brought!

In outward semblance he must give

A moment's life of things that live;