Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/324

286 Of the interminable hours,

Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,

When our world-deafened ear

Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed,—

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,

And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.

A man becomes aware of his life's flow,

And hears its winding murmur, and he sees

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race

Wherein he doth forever chase

The flying and elusive shadow, rest.

An air of coolness plays upon his face.

And an unwonted calm pervades his breast;

And then he thinks he knows

The hills where his life rose,

And the sea where it goes.

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

this lone, open glade I lie,

Screened by deep boughs on either hand;

And at its end, to stay the eye,

Those black-crowned, red-boled pine-trees stand.

Birds here make song, each bird has his,

Across the girdling city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!