Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/443

Rh Not by those hoary Indian hills,

Not by this gracious Midland sea

Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills,

Should our graves be.

Some sage, to whom the world was dead,

And men were specks, and life a play;

Who made the roots of trees his bed,

And once a day

With staff and gourd his way did bend

To villages and homes of man,

For food to keep him till he end

His mortal span,—

And the pure goal of being reach;

Gray-headed, wrinkled, clad in white;

Without companion, without speech,

By day and night

Pondering God's mysteries untold,

And tranquil as the glacier-snows,—

He by those Indian mountains old

Might well repose.

Some gray crusading knight austere,

Who bore Saint Louis company,

And came home hurt to death, and here

Landed to die;

Some youthful troubadour, whose tongue

Filled Europe once with his love-pain,

Who here outworn had sunk, and sung

His dying strain;

Some girl, who here from castle-bower,

With furtive step and cheek of flame,

'Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower

By moonlight came