The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

MEMORIA L VERSE S / 135 9 Of passion with eternal law; And yet with reverential awe We watched the fount of fiery life Which served for that Titanic strife. 15202530 When Goethe's death was told, we said: Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head. Physician of the iron age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear; And struck his finger on the place, And said: Tliou ailest here, and here! He looked on Europe's dying hour Of fitful dream and feverish power; His eye plunged down the weltering strife, The turmoil of expiring life� He said: The end is everywhere, Art still has truth, take refuge there! And he was happy, if to know Causes of things, and far below His feet to see the lurid flow Of terror, and insane distress, And headlong fate, be happiness. 3540And Wordsworth!�Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice! For never has such soothing voice Been to your shadowy world conveyed, Since erst,� at morn, some wandering shadeHeard the clear song of Orpheus2 come Through Hades, and the mournful gloom. Wordsworth has gone from us�and ye, Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen�on this iron time formerly 4550Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears. He found us when the age had bound Our souls in its benumbing round; He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth, Smiles broke from us and we had ease; The hills were round us, and the breeze Went o'er the sunlit fields again; Our foreheads felt the wind and rain. 55Our youth returned; for there was shed On spirits that had long been dead, Spirits dried up and closely furled, The freshness of the early world. Ah! since dark days still bring to light Man's prudence and man's fiery might,

2. By means of his beautiful music, the legendary Greek singer Orpheus won his way through Hades as he searched for his dead wife, Eurydice.

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136 0 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

606570 Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing power? Others will teach us how to dare, And against fear our breast to steel; Others will strengthen us to bear� But who, ah! who, will make us feel? The cloud of mortal destiny, Others will front it fearlessly� But who, like him, will put it by? Keep fresh the grass upon his grave O Rotha,3 with thy living wave! Sing him thy best! for few or none Hears thy voice right, now he is gone. 1850 1850

Lines Written in Kensington Gardens1

In this lone, open glade I lie,

Screened by deep boughs on either hand;

And at its end, to stay the eye,

Those black-crowned, red-boled pine trees stand! 5 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!2

Sometimes a child will cross the glade

io 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!

15 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,

20 Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. In the huge world, which roars hard0 by, close

Be others happy if they can!

3. A river near Wordsworth's burial place. 2. Sheep sometimes grazed in London parks. 1. A park in the heart of London.

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TH E SCHOLA R GYPS Y / 136 1 But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan.3 25 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. 30Yet here is peace forever new! When I who watch them am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day. 35Then to their happy rest they pass! The flowers upclose, the birds are fed, The night comes down upon the grass, The child sleeps warmly in his bed. 40Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar. The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel with others give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live. 1852

The Scholar Gypsy The story of a seventeenth-century student who left

Oxford and joined a band of gypsies had made a strong impression on Arnold. In the

poem he wistfully imagines that the spirit of this scholar is still to be encountered in

the Cumner countryside near Oxford, having achieved immortality by a serene pursuit

of the secret of human existence. Like Keats's nightingale, the scholar has escaped

"the weariness, the fever, and the fret" of modern life. At the outset the poet addresses a shepherd who has been helping him in his search

for traces of the scholar. The shepherd is addressed as you. After line 61, with the

shift to thou and thy, the person addressed is the scholar, and the poet thereafter