Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/481

Rh Her stately purple she abhorred,

And her imperial crown.

"She broke her flutes, she stopped her sports,

Her artists could not please.

She tore her books, she shut her courts,

She fled her palaces.

"Lust of the eye, and pride of life,

She left it all behind,

And hurried, torn with inward strife,

The wilderness to find.

"Tears washed the trouble from her face;

She changed into a child;

'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,—a place

Of ruin,—but she smiled!

"Oh, had I lived in that great day,

How had its glory new

Filled earth and heaven, and caught away

My ravished spirit too!

"No thoughts that to the world belong

Had stood against the wave

Of love which set so deep and strong

From Christ's then open grave.

"No cloister-floor of humid stone

Had been too cold for me;

For me no Eastern desert lone

Had been too far to flee.

"No lonely life had passed too slow,

When I could hourly scan

Upon his cross, with head sunk low,

That nailed, thorn-crownèd Man;