Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/312

274 Well I know what they feel!

They gaze, and the evening wind

Plays on their faces; they gaze,—

Airs from the Eden of youth

Awake and stir in their soul;

The past returns: they feel

What they are, alas! what they were.

They, not Nature, are changed.

Well I know what they feel!

Hush, for tears

Begin to steal to their eyes!

Hush, for fruit

Grows from such sorrow as theirs!

And they remember,

With piercing, untold anguish,

The proud boasting of their youth.

And they feel how Nature was fair.

And the mists of delusion,

And the scales of habit,

Fall away from their eyes;

And they see, for a moment,

Stretching out like the desert

In its weary, unprofitable length,

Their faded, ignoble lives.

While the locks are yet brown on thy head,

While the soul still looks through thine eyes,

While the heart still pours

The mantling blood to thy cheek,

Sink, O youth, in thy soul!

Yearn to the greatness of Nature;

Rally the good in the depths of thyself!