Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/432

394 Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night

In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

I see her veil draw soft across the day,

I feel her slowly chilling breath invade

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with gray;

I feel her finger light

Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train,—

The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,

The heart less bounding at emotion new,

And hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.

And long the way appears, which seemed so short

To the less-practised eye of sanguine youth;

And high the mountain tops, in cloudy air,—

The mountain tops where is the throne of Truth,

Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!

Unbreachable the fort

Of the long-battered world uplifts its wall;

And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,

And near and real the charm of thy repose,

And night as welcome as a friend would fall.

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss

Of quiet! Look, adown the dusk hillside,

A troop of Oxford hunters going home,

As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.

Quick! let me fly, and cross

Into yon farther field! 'Tis done; and see,

Backed by the sunset, which doth glorify

The orange and pale violet evening-sky,

Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!