Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/360

322 THE CHORUS.

Much is there which the sea

Conceals from man, who cannot plumb its depths.

Air to his unwing'd form denies a way,

And keeps its liquid solitudes unscaled.

Even earth, whereon he treads,

So feeble is his march, so slow,

Holds countless tracts untrod.

But more than all unplumb'd,

Unsealed, untrodden, is the heart of man.

More than all secrets hid, the way it keeps.

Nor any of our organs so obtuse,

Inaccurate, and frail,

As those wherewith we try to test

Feelings and motives there.

Yea, and not only have we not explored

That wide and various world, the heart of others,

But even our own heart, that narrow world

Bounded in our own breast, we hardly know,

Of our own actions dimly trace the causes.

Whether a natural obscureness, hiding

That region in perpetual cloud,

Or our own want of effort, be the bar.

Therefore—while acts are from their motives judged,

And to one act many most unlike motives,

This pure, that guilty, may have each impell'd—

Power fails us to try clearly if that cause

Assign'd us by the actor be the true one;

Power fails the man himself to fix distinctly

The cause which drew him to his deed,

And stamp himself, thereafter, bad or good.