Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. Arnold Matthew

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       Shall be left standing face to face with God.

RELIGIOUS ISOLATION

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TO THE SAME FRIEND

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      Children (as such forgive them) have I known,

       Ever in their own eager pastime bent

       To make the incurious bystander, intent

       On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own—

      Too fearful or too fond to play alone.

       Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul

       (Not less thy boast) illuminates, control

       Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.

      What though the holy secret, which moulds thee,

       Mould not the solid earth? though never winds

       Have whisper'd it to the complaining sea,

      Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds?—

       To its own impulse every creature stirs;

       Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers!

MYCERINUS[2]

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      "Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,

       Not for the thousands whom my father slew,

       Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,

       Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;

       Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,

       Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

      "I will unfold my sentence and my crime.

       My crime—that, rapt in reverential awe,

       I sate obedient, in the fiery prime

       Of youth, self-govern'd, at the feet of Law;

       Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,

       By contemplation of diviner things.

      "My father loved injustice, and lived long;

       Crown'd with gray hairs he died, and full of sway.

       I loved the good he scorn'd, and hated wrong—

       The Gods declare my recompence to-day.

       I look'd for life more lasting, rule more high;

       And when six years are measured, lo, I die!

      "Yet surely, O my people, did I deem

       Man's justice from the all-just Gods was given;

       A light that from some upper fount did beam,

       Some better archetype, whose seat was heaven;

       A light that, shining from the blest abodes,

       Did shadow somewhat of the life of Gods.

      "Mere phantoms of man's self-tormenting heart,

       Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed!

       Vain dreams, which quench our pleasures, then depart,

       When the duped soul, self-master'd, claims its meed;

       When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows,

       Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close!

      "Seems it so light a thing, then, austere Powers,

       To spurn man's common lure, life's pleasant things?

       Seems there no joy in dances crown'd with flowers,

       Love, free to range, and regal banquetings?

       Bend ye on these, indeed, an unmoved eye,

       Not Gods but ghosts, in frozen apathy?

      "Or is it that some Force, too wise, too strong,

       Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile,

       Sweeps earth, and heaven, and men, and gods along,

       Like the broad volume of the insurgent Nile?

       And the great powers we serve, themselves may be

       Slaves of a tyrannous necessity?

      "Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden cars,

       Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight,

       And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars,

       Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night?

       Or in deaf ease, on thrones of dazzling sheen,

       Drinking deep draughts of joy, ye dwell serene?

      "Oh, wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be,

       Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream?

       Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see,

       Blind divinations of a will supreme;

       Lost labour! when the circumambient gloom

       But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom?

      "The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,

       My sand runs short; and—as yon star-shot ray,

       Hemm'd by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,

       Now, as the barrier closes, dies away—

       Even so do past and future intertwine,

       Blotting this six years' space, which yet is mine.

      "Six years—six little years—six drops of time!

       Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,

       And old men die, and young men pass their prime,

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