Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/436

398 When Byron's eyes were shut in death,

We bowed our head, and held our breath.

He taught us little, but our soul

Had felt him like the thunder's roll.

With shivering heart the strife we saw

Of passion with eternal law;

And yet with reverential awe

We watched the fount of fiery life

Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said,—

Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.

Physician of the iron age,

Goethe has done his pilgrimage.

He took the suffering human race,

He read each wound, each weakness clear;

And struck his finger on the place,

And said, Thou ailest here, and here!

He looked on Europe's dying hour

Of fitful dream and feverish power;

His eye plunged down the weltering strife,

The turmoil of expiring life:

He said, The end is everywhere,

Art still has truth, take refuge there!

And he was happy, if to know

Causes of things, and far below

His feet to see the lurid flow

Of terror, and insane distress,

And headlong fate, be happiness.

And Wordsworth! Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!

For never has such soothing voice

Been to your shadowy world conveyed,

Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade