Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/328

290 THE FUTURE.

is man from his birth.

He was born in a ship

On the breast of the river of Time;

Brimming with wonder and joy,

He spreads out his arms to the light,

Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.

Whether he wakes

Where the snowy mountainous pass,

Echoing the screams of the eagles,

Hems in its gorges the bed

Of the new-born, clear-flowing stream;

Whether he first sees light

Where the river in gleaming rings

Sluggishly winds through the plain;

Whether in sound of the swallowing sea,—

As is the world on the banks,

So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,

Fable and dream

Of the lands which the river of Time

Had left ere he woke on its breast,

Or shall reach when his eyes have been closed.

Only the tract where he sails

He wots of; only the thoughts,

Raised by the objects he passes, are his.

Who can see the green earth any more

As she was by the sources of Time?

Who imagines her fields as they lay

In the sunshine, unworn by the plough?