Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/319

Rh Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep

As clearly as at noon;

The spring-tide's brimming flow

Heaved dazzlingly between;

Houses, with long white sweep,

Girdled the glistening bay;

Behind, through the soft air,

The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.

That night was far more fair—

But the same restless pacings to and fro,

And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,

And the same bright, calm moon.

And the calm moonlight seems to say,—

Hast thou, then, still the old unquiet breast,

Which neither deadens into rest,

Nor ever feels the fiery glow

That whirls the spirit from itself away,

But fluctuates to and fro,

Nether by passion quite possessed,

And never quite benumbed by the world's sway?

And I, I know not if to pray

Still to be what I am, or yield, and be

Like all the other men I see.

For most men in a brazen prison live,

Where, in the sun's hot eye,

With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly

Their lives to some unmeaning task-work give,

Dreaming of naught beyond their prison-wall.

And as, year after year,

Fresh products of their barren labor fall

From their tired hands, and rest

Never yet comes more near.

Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.