Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/484

446 "Upon them plies the race of man

All it before endeavored:

'Ye live,' I cried, 'ye work and plan,

And know not ye are severed!

"'Poor fragments of a broken world,

Whereon men pitch their tent!

Why were ye too to death not hurled

When your world's day was spent?

"'That glow of central fire is done

Which with its fusing flame

Knit all your parts, and kept you one;

But ye, ye are the same!

"'The past, its mask of union on,

Had ceased to live and thrive:

The past, its mask of union gone,

Say, is it more alive?

"'Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,

Your social order too.

Where tarries he, the Power who said,—

See, I make all things new?

"'The millions suffer still, and grieve.

And what can helpers heal

With old-world cures men half believe

For woes they wholly feel?

"'And yet men have such need of joy!

But joy whose grounds are true,

And joy that should all hearts employ

As when the past was new.

"'Ah! not the emotion of that past,

Its common hope, were vain!