Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/466

428 So much unlearned, so much resigned:

I come not here to be your foe!

I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,

To curse and to deny your truth;

Not as their friend, or child, I speak!

But as, on some far northern strand,

Thinking of his own gods, a Greek

In pity and mournful awe might stand

Before some fallen Runic stone;

For both were faiths, and both are gone.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born,

With nowhere yet to rest my head,

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

Their faith, my tears, the world deride:

I come to shed them at their side.

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,

Ye solemn seats of holy pain!

Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round,

Till I possess my soul again;

Till free my thoughts before me roll,

Not chafed by hourly false control!

For the world cries, your faith is now

But a dead time's exploded dream;

My melancholy, sciolists say,

Is a passed mode, an outworn theme.—

As if the world had ever had

A faith, or sciolists been sad!

Ah! if it be passed, take away,

At least, the restlessness, the pain!

Be man henceforth no more a prey

To these out-dated stings again!