Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/426

388 Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear,

And life ran gayly as the sparkling Thames;

Before this strange disease of modern life,

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife,—

Fly hence, our contact fear!

Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!

Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern

From her false friend's approach in Hades turn,

Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,

Still clutching the inviolable shade,

With a free, onward impulse brushing through,

By night, the silvered branches of the glade,—

Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,

On some mild pastoral slope

Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales

Freshen thy flowers as in former years

With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,

From the dark dingles, to the nightingales!

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!

For strong the infection of our mental strife,

Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;

And we should win thee from thy own fair life,

Like us distracted, and like us unblest.

Soon, soon thy cheer would die,

Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers,

And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made:

And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,

Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!

—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,