Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/424

386 —No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours!

For what wears out the life of mortal men?

'Tis that from change to change their being rolls;

'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,

Exhaust the energy of strongest souls,

And numb the elastic powers,

Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,

And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,

To the just-pausing Genius we remit

Our well-worn life, and are—what we have been.

Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?

Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire;

Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead!

Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!

The generations of thy peers are fled,

And we ourselves shall go;

But thou possessest an immortal lot,

And we imagine thee exempt from age,

And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page,

Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not.

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers

Fresh, undiverted to the world without,

Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;

Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,

Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.

O life unlike to ours!

Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,

And each half lives a hundred different lives;

Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.