Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/511

Rh

Yet stains there are to blot thy brightest page,

And wither half the laurels on thy tomb;

A glorious manhood, yet a dim old age,

And years of crime, and nothingness, and gloom:

And then that mightiest crash, that giant fall,

Ambition's boldest dream might sober and appal.

Thou wondrous chaos, where together dwell

Present and past, the living and the dead,

Thou shattered mass, whose glorious ruins tell

The vanisht might of that discrownëd head:

Where all we see, or do, or hear, or say,

Seems strangely echoed back by tones of yesterday:

Thou solemn grave, where every step we tread

Treads on the slumbering dust of other years;

The while there sleeps within thy precincts dread

What once had human passions, hopes, and fears;

And memory's gushing tide swells deep and full

And makes thy very ruin fresh and beautiful.

Alas, no common sepulchre art thou,

No habitation for the nameless dead,

Green turf above, and crumbling dust below,

Perchance some mute memorial at their head,

But one vast fane where all unconscious sleep

Earth's old heroic forms in peaceful slumbers deep.