The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,

2. The dining hail of this Oxford college. Roman mythology a genius was an attendant 3. Perhaps the spirit of the universe, which pauses spirit.) briefly to receive back the life given to us. (In

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136 6 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

165 Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.

O life unlike to ours!

Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,

Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,

And each half4 lives a hundred different lives;

170 Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,

Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,

Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,

175 Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;

For whom each year we see

Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;

Who hesitate and falter life away,

And lose tomorrow the ground won today�

iso Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too? Yes, we await it!�but it still delays,

And then we suffer! and amongst us one,5

Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly

His seat upon the intellectual throne;

185 And all his store of sad experience he Lays bare of wretched days;

Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs,

And how the dying spark of hope was fed,

And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,

190 And all his hourly varied anodynes. This for our wisest! and we others pine,

And wish the long unhappy dream would end,

And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear;

With close-lipped patience for our only friend,

195 Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair� But none has hope like thine!

Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,

Roaming the countryside, a truant boy,

Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,

200 And every doubt long blown by time away. O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,

And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;

Before this strange disease of modern life,

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

205 Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife�

Fly hence, our contact fear!

Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!

Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern

From her false friend's approach in Hades turn,6

210 Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

4. An adverb modifying "lives." 6. Dido committed suicide after her lover, Aeneas, 5. Probably Goethe, although possibly referring to deserted her. When he later encountered her in Tennyson, whose In Memoriam had appeared in Hades, she silently turned away from him (see Vir1850! gil's Aeneid, book 6).

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THE SCHOLAR GYPSY / 1367

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,

Still clutching the inviolable shade,

With a free, onward impulse brushing through,

By night, the silvered branches of the glade�

215 Far on the forest skirts, where none pursue.

On some mild pastoral slope

Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales

Freshen thy flowers as in former years

With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, 220 From the dark dingles,0 to the nightingales! small deep valleys

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!

For strong the infection of our mental strife,

Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;

And we should win thee from thy own fair life,

225 Like us distracted, and like us unblest.

Soon, soon thy cheer would die,

Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed thy powers,

And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made;

And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,

230 Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!

�As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,

Descried at sunrise an emerging prow

Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily,

235 The fringes of a southward-facing brow Among the Aegean isles;

And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,

Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,

Green, bursting figs, and tunnies0 steeped in brine� tuna fish

240 And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young lighthearted masters of the waves�

And snatched his rudder, and shook out more sail;

And day and night held on indignantly

O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,

245 Betwixt the Syrtes7 and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves

Outside the western straits; and unbent sails

There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,

Shy traffickers, the dark tberians8 come;

250 And on the beach undid his corded bales.9

1853