Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/94

56 Fate gave, what chance shall not control,

His sad lucidity of soul.

You listen; but that wandering smile,

Fausta, betrays you cold the while!

Your eyes pursue the bells of foam

Washed, eddying, from this bank, their home.

Those gypsies—so your thoughts I scan—

Are less, the poet more, than man.

They feel not, though they move and see.

Deeper the poet feels; but he

Breathes, when he will, immortal air,

Where Orpheus and where Homer are.

In the day's life, whose iron round

Hems us all in, he is not bound;

He leaves his kind, o'erleaps their pen,

And flees the common life of men.

He escapes thence, but we abide.

Not deep the poet sees, but wide.

The world in which we live and move

Outlasts aversion, outlasts love,

Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,

Remorse, grief, joy; and, were the scope

Of these affections wider made,

Man still would see, and see dismayed,

Beyond his passion's widest range,

Far regions of eternal change.

Nay, and since death, which wipes out man,

Finds him with many an unsolved plan,

With much unknown, and much untried,

Wonder not dead, and thirst not dried,

Still gazing on the ever full

Eternal mundane spectacle,—