Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/318

280 See, on her face a glow is spread,

A strong emotion on her cheek!

"Ah, child!" she cries, "that strife divine,

Whence was it, for it is not mine?

"There is no effort on my brow;

I do not strive, I do not weep:

I rush with the swift spheres, and glow

In joy, and when I will, I sleep.

Yet that severe, that earnest air,

I saw, I felt it once—but where?

"I knew not yet the gauge of time,

Nor wore the manacles of space;

I felt it in some other clime,

I saw it in some other place.

'Twas when the heavenly house I trod,

And lay upon the breast of God."

A SUMMER NIGHT.

the deserted, moon-blanched street,

How lonely rings the echo of my feet!

Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,

Silent and white, unopening down,

Repellent as the world; but see,

A break between the housetops shows

The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim

Into the dewy dark obscurity

Down at the far horizon's rim,

Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!

And to my mind the thought

Is on a sudden brought

Of a past night, and a far different scene.