Poems. Arnold Matthew

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      With a sad, majestic motion,

       With a stately, slow surprise,

       From their earthward-bound devotion

       Lifting up your languid eyes—

       Would you freeze my louder boldness,

       Dumbly smiling as you go,

       One faint frown of distant coldness

       Flitting fast across each marble brow?

      Do I brighten at your sorrow,

       O sweet pleaders? doth my lot

       Find assurance in to-morrow

       Of one joy which you have not?

       Oh, speak once, and shame my sadness!

       Let this sobbing, Phrygian strain,

       Mocked and baffled by your gladness,

       Mar the music of your feasts in vain!

      … … . …

      Scent, and song, and light, and flowers!

       Gust on gust, the harsh winds blow—

       Come, bind up those ringlet showers!

       Roses for that dreaming brow!

       Come, once more that ancient lightness,

       Glancing feet, and eager eyes!

       Let your broad lamps flash the brightness

       Which the sorrow-stricken day denies.

      Through black depths of serried shadows,

       Up cold aisles of buried glade;

       In the mist of river-meadows

       Where the looming deer are laid;

       From your dazzled windows streaming,

       From your humming festal room,

       Deep and far, a broken gleaming

       Reels and shivers on the ruffled gloom.

      Where I stand, the grass is glowing:

       Doubtless you are passing fair!

       But I hear the north wind blowing,

       And I feel the cold night-air,

       Can I look on your sweet faces,

       And your proud heads backward thrown,

       From this dusk of leaf-strewn places

       With the dumb woods and the night alone?

      Yet, indeed, this flux of guesses—

       Mad delight, and frozen calms—

       Mirth to-day, and vine-bound tresses,

       And to-morrow—folded palms;

       Is this all? this balanced measure?

       Could life run no happier way?

       Joyous at the height of pleasure,

       Passive at the nadir of dismay?

      But, indeed, this proud possession,

       This far-reaching, magic chain,

       Linking in a mad succession

       Fits of joy and fits of pain—

       Have you seen it at the closing?

       Have you tracked its clouded ways?

       Can your eyes, while fools are dozing,

       Drop, with mine, adown life’s latter days?

      When a dreary light is wading

       Through this waste of sunless greens,

       When the flashing lights are fading

       On the peerless cheek of queens,

       When the mean shall no more sorrow,

       And the proudest no more smile;

       While the dawning of the morrow

       Widens slowly westward all that while?

      Then, when change itself is over,

       When the slow tide sets one way,

       Shall you find the radiant lover,

       Even by moments, of to-day?

       The eye wanders, faith is failing:

       Oh, loose hands, and let it be!

       Proudly, like a king bewailing,

       Oh, let fall one tear, and set us free!

      All true speech and large avowal

       Which the jealous soul concedes;

       All man’s heart which brooks bestowal,

       All frank faith which passion breeds—

       These we had, and we gave truly;

       Doubt not, what we had, we gave!

       False we were not, nor unruly;

       Lodgers in the forest and the cave.

      Long we wandered with you, feeding

       Our rapt souls on your replies,

       In a wistful silence reading

       All the meaning of your eyes.

       By moss-bordered statues sitting,

       By well-heads, in summer days.

       But we turn, our eyes are flitting—

       See, the white east, and the morning-rays!

      And you too, O worshipped Graces,

       Sylvan gods of this fair shade!

       Is there doubt on divine faces?

       Are the blessed gods dismayed?

       Can men worship the wan features,

       The sunk eyes, the wailing tone,

       Of unsphered, discrownèd creatures,

       Souls as little godlike as their own?

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