Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/473

Rh Too fast we live, too much are tried,

Too harassed, to attain

Wordsworth's sweet calm, or Goethe's wide

And luminous view to gain.

And then we turn, thou sadder sage,

To thee! we feel thy spell!

—The hopeless tangle of our age,

Thou too hast scanned it well.

Immovable thou sittest, still

As death, composed to bear;

Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,

And icy thy despair.

Yes, as the son of Thetis said,

I hear thee saying now:

Greater by far than thou are dead;

Strive not! die also thou!

Ah! two desires toss about

The poet's feverish blood;

One drives him to the world without,

And one to solitude.

The glow, he cries, the thrill of life,

Where, where do these abound?

Not in the world, not in the strife

Of men, shall they be found.

He who hath watched, not shared, the strife,

Knows how the day hath gone:

He only lives with the world's life,

Who hath renounced his own.

To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled

Where thou, O seer! art set;