Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/320

282 And while they try to stem

The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,

Death in their prison reaches them,

Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.

And the rest, a few,

Escape their prison, and depart

On the wide ocean of life anew.

There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart

Listeth, will sail;

Nor doth he know how there prevail,

Despotic on that sea,

Trade-winds which cross it from eternity.

Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred

By thwarting signs, and braves

The freshening wind and blackening waves.

And then the tempest strikes him; and between

The lightning-bursts is seen

Only a driving wreck,

And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck

With anguished face and flying hair,

Grasping the rudder hard,

Still bent to make some port, he knows not where,

Still standing for some false, impossible shore.

And sterner comes the roar

Of sea and wind; and through the deepening gloom

Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,

And he too disappears, and comes no more.

Is there no life, but these alone?

Madman or slave, must man be one?

Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!

Clearness divine!

Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign