"LIKE DRIFTWOOD SPARS WHICH MEET AND PASS UPON THE BOUNDLESS OCEAN PLAIN;

14

"FOR WHAT WEARS OUT THE LIFE OF MORTAL MEN?

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Weeping at his master's end;
For the Faun had been his friend.
For he taught him how to sing,
And he taught him flute-playing.
Many a morning had they gone
To the glimmering mountain-lakes,

And had torn up by the roots
The tall-crested water-reeds

With long plumes, and soft brown seeds,
And had carved them into flutes,

Sitting on a tabled stone

Where the shoreward ripple breaks.
And he taught him how to please
The red-snooded Phrygian girls,
Whom the summer evening sees,
Flashing in the dance's whirls,
Underneath the starlit trees
In the mountain-villages.
Therefore now Olympus stands,
At his master's piteous cries
Pressing fast with both his hands
His white garment to his eyes,
Not to see Apollo's scorn ;-

Ah, poor Faun, poor Faun! ah, poor Faun!

[From "Empedocles on Etna

a long and lofty chant" on the

"For its

nothingness of life and the mutability of human things, relieved by lyrical
interludes of surpassing beauty. One of these is here given.
absolute loveliness of sound and colour," says Mr. Swinburne, "there are
no adequate words that would not seem violent...... Verse stately as the step
and radiant as the head of Apollo,..
,....no poet has ever come so near the
perfect Greek; he has strung with a fresh chord the old Sophoclean lyre."]

'TIS THAT FROM CHANGE TO CHANGE THEIR BEING ROLLS."-ARNOLD.

SO ON THE SEA OF LIFE, ALAS! MAN NEARS MAN, MEETS, AND LEAVES AGAIN."-ARNOLD.

"BUT WE BROUGHT FORTH, AND REARED IN HOURS OF CHANGE, ALARM, SURPRISE,

66 LONG THE WAY APPEARS, WHICH SEEMED SO SHORT

A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD.

A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD.

HAT made my heart at Newstead fullest swell?
'Twas not the thought of Byron-of his cry

Stormily sweet, his Titan agony :

It was the sight of that Lord Arundel

WHAT SHELTER TO GROW RIPE IS OURS, WHAT LEISURE TO GROW WISE?"-ARNOLD.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

Who struck in heat the child he loved so well;
And the child's reason flickered, and did die.
Painted (he willed it) in the gallery

They hang the picture doth the story tell.
Behold the stern, mailed father, staff in hand!
The little fair-haired son, with vacant gaze,
Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are!

Methinks the woe that made that father stand,
Baring his dumb remorse to future days,

Was woe than Byron's woe more tragic far.

[From "Sonnets," in Mr. Matthew Arnold's "Collected Poems," edit. 1869.]

TO THE LESS PRACTISED EYE OF SANGUINE YOUTH."-ARNOLD.

15

(2)

"THIS IS THE CURSE OF LIFE THAT NOT A NOBLER, CALMER TRAIN-MATTHEW ARNOLD)

OF WISER THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS BLOT OUR PASSIONS FROM OUR BRAIN."-MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Yes, this, and more. But not,

Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life

"HITHER AND THITHER SPINS THE WIND-BORNE, MIRRORING SOUL (ARNOLD)

"A THIRST TO SPEND OUR FIRE AND RESTLESS FORCE

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world

As from a height, with rapt, prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young!
It is to add, immured

In the hot prison of the present, month

To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,

And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion-none !

It is last stage of all—

When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,

To hear the world applaud the living ghost,
Which blamed the living man.

[From "Collected Poems," 1869.]

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS.

IN this lone open glade I lie,

Screened by deep boughs on either hand.
Where ends the glade, to stay the eye,

Those black-crowned, red-boled pine-trees stand.

IN TRACKING OUT OUR TRUE, ORIGINAL COURSE.' -ARNOLD.

A THOUSAND GLIMPSES WINS, AND NEVER SEES A WHOLE."-MATTHEW ARNOLD.

17

"WE FEEL, DAY AND NIGHT, THE PURDEN OF OURSELVES."-MATTHEW ARNOLD.

18

"THE STREAM OF LIFE'S MAJESTIC WHOle.”- -ARNOLD.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Birds here make song, each bird has his,

Across the girdling city's hum;
How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead,
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,

What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretched out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world which roars hard by,
Be others happy, if they can!
But in my helpless cradle, I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurled,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world,
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!

When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

THOUGHTS LIGHT, LIKE GLEAMS, MY SPIRIT'S SKY."-ARNOLD.

"WE WOULD HAVE MISERY CEASE, YET WILL NOT CEASE FROM SIN."-ARNOLD.