Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/494

456 And truly he who here

Hath run his bright career,

And served men nobly, and acceptance found,

And borne to light and right his witness high,

What could he better wish than then to die,

And wait the issue, sleeping underground?

Why should he pray to range

Down the long age of truth that ripens slow;

And break his heart with all the baffling change,

And all the tedious tossing to and fro?

For this and that way swings

The flux of mortal things,

Though moving inly to one far-set goal.—

What had our Arthur gain'd, to stop and see,

After light's term, a term of cecity,

A Church once large and then grown strait in soul?

To live, and see arise,

Alternating with wisdom's too short reign,

Folly revived, re-furbish'd sophistries,

And pullulating rites externe and vain?

Ay me! 'Tis deaf, that ear

Which joy'd my voice to hear;

Yet would I not disturb thee from thy tomb,

Thus sleeping in thine Abbey's friendly shade,

And the rough waves of life for ever laid!

I would not break thy rest, nor change thy doom.

Even as my father, thou—

Even as that loved, that well-recorded friend—

Hast thy commission done; ye both may now

Wait for the leaven to work, the let to end.