Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/96

58 Enough, we live! and if a life

With large results so little rife,

Though bearable, seem hardly worth

This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth;

Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,

The solemn hills around us spread,

This stream which falls incessantly,

The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,

If I might lend their life a voice,

Seem to bear rather than rejoice.

And even could the intemperate prayer

Man iterates, while these forbear,

For movement, for an ampler sphere,

Pierce Fate's impenetrable ear;

Not milder is the general lot

Because our spirits have forgot,

In action's dizzying eddy whirled,

The something that infects the world.

A DREAM.

it a dream? We sail'd, I thought we sail'd,

Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream,

Border'd, each bank, with pines; the morning sun,

On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,

On the red pinings of their forest-floor,

Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines

The mountain-skirts, with all their sylvan change

Of bright-leaf'd chestnuts and moss'd walnut-trees

And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.

Swiss chalets glitter'd on the dewy slopes,

And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came

Notes of wild pastoral music—over all

Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow.

Upon the mossy rocks at the stream's edge,