Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/83

Rh Oh, when most self-exalted most alone,

Chief dreamer, own thy dream!

Thy brother-world stirs at thy feet unknown;

Who hath a monarch's hath no brother's part—

Yet doth thine inmost soul with yearning teem.

Oh, what a spasm shakes the dreamer's heart!

"I, too, but seem."

THE WORLD AND THE QUIETIST.

TO CRITIAS.

", when the world's great mind

Hath finally inclined,

Why," you say, Critias, "be debating still?

Why, with these mournful rhymes

Learned in more languid climes,

Blame our activity

Who, with such passionate will,

Are what we mean to be?"

Critias, long since, I know

(For Fate decreed it so),

Long since the world hath set its heart to live;

Long since, with credulous zeal

It turns life's mighty wheel,

Still doth for laborers send

Who still their labor give,

And still expects an end.

Yet, as the wheel flies round,

With no ungrateful sound

Do adverse voices fall on the world's ear.

Deafened by his own stir,

The rugged laborer