The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

TH E BURIE D LIF E / 135 7 Our heart, and have our lips unchained; For that which seals them hath been deep-ordained! 303540 Fate, which foresaw How frivolous a baby man would be� By what distractions he would be possessed, How he would pour himself in every strife, And well-nigh change his own identity� That it might keep from his capricious play His genuine self, and force him to obey Even in his own despite his being's law, Bade through the deep recesses of our breast The unregarded river of our life Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; And that we should not see The buried stream, and seem to be Eddying at large in blind uncertainty, Though driving on with it eternally. 4550556065 But often, in the world's most crowded streets,1 But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us�to know Whence our lives come and where they go. And many a man in his own breast then delves, But deep enough, alas! none ever mines. And we have been on many thousand fines, And we have shown, on each, spirit and power; But hardly have we, for one little hour, Been on our own line, have we been ourselves� Hardly had skill to utter one of all The nameless feelings that course through our breast, But they course on forever unexpressed. And long we try in vain to speak and act Our hidden self, and what we say and do Is eloquent, is well�but 'tis not true! And then we will no more be racked 70With inward striving, and demand Of all the thousand nothings of the hour Their stupefying power; Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call! Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne

1. This passage, like many others in Arnold's cities, I have owed to them, / In hours of wearipoetry, illustrates William Wordsworth's effect on ness, sensations sweet." Cf. also The Prelude his writings. In this instance cf. Wordsworth's (1850) 7.626: "How oft amid those overflowing "Tintern Abbey (1798), lines 25-27: "But oft, in streets . . ." lonely rooms, and 'mid the din / Of towns and

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135 8 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

As from an infinitely distant land,

75 Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all our day.2 soOnly�but this is rare� When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafened ear 8590Is by the tones of a loved voice caressed� A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth forever chase 95That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes. 1852

Memorial Verses1

April 1850

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,

Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.

But one such death remained to come;

The last poetic voice is dumb�

5 We stand today by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,

We bowed our head and held our breath.

He taught us little; but our soul

Had felt him like the thunder's roll,

io With shivering heart the strife we saw

2. Cf. Wordworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immor-who died in Greece in 1 824, had affected Arnold tality" (1807), lines 149-5 I: "Those shadowy rec-profoundly in his youth, but later that strenuous ollections, / Which, be they what they may, / Are "Titanic" (line 14) poetry seemed to him less sat- yet the fountain light of all our day." isfactory, its value limited by its lack of serenity. 1. This elegy was written shortly after Wordsworth He gives his final verdict on Byron in his essay in had died in April 1850, at the age of eighty. Arnold Essays in Criticism: Second Series (1888). He had known the poet as a man and deeply admired regarded Goethe, who died in 1 832, as a great philhis writings�as is evident not only in this poem osophical poet and the most significant man of let- but in his late essay "Wordsworth" (1888). Byron, ters of the early 19th century.

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