The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

6. Writers whose insistence on testing religious 8. A monument inscribed in Teutonic letters beliefs in the light of fact and reason persuaded (runes), emblematic of a Nordic religion that has Arnold that faith in Christianity (especially in the become extinct. The relic reminds the Greek that Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic forms) was no his own religion is likewise dying and will soon be longer tenable in the modern world. extinct (see "Preface" to Poems [1853], p. 1374). 7. Remorse for having adopted the rationalist view 9. Superficial-minded persons who pretend to of Christianity. know the answers to all questions.

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137 2 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

The nobleness of grief is gone�

Ah, leave us not the fret alone!

But�if you' cannot give us ease�

no Last of the race of them who grieve

Here leave us to die out with these

Last of the people who believe!

Silent, while years engrave the brow;

Silent�the best are silent now.

115 Achilles2 ponders in his tent,

The kings of modern thought3 are dumb;

Silent they are, though not content,

And wait to see the future come.

They have the grief men had of yore,

120 But they contend and cry no more.

Our fathers4 watered with their tears

This sea of time whereon we sail,

Their voices were in all men's ears

Who passed within their puissant hail.

125 Still the same ocean round us raves, But we stand mute, and watch the waves.

For what availed it, all the noise

And outcry of the former men?�

Say, have their sons achieved more joys,

130 Say, is life lighter now than then? The sufferers died, they left their pain�

The pangs which tortured them remain.

What helps it now, that Byron bore,

With haughty scorn which mocked the smart,

135 Through Europe to the Aetolian shore5

The pageant of his bleeding heart?

That thousands counted every groan,

And Europe made his woe her own?

What boots0 it, Shelley! that the breeze avails HO Carried thy lovely wail away,

Musical through Italian trees

Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?6

Inheritors of thy distress

Have restless hearts one throb the less?

1. It is not clear whether the speaker has resumed 3. Variously but never satisfactorily identified as addressing his "rigorous teachers" (line 67) or (as John Henry' Newman or Thomas Carlyle (the latter would seem more likely) a combination of the sci-was said to have preached the gospel of silence in olists, who scorn the speaker's melancholy, and the forty volumes). Another advocate of stoical silence worldly, who scorn the faith of the monks. See his was the French poet Alfred de Vigny (1 797-1863). address to the "sons of the world" (lines 161�68). 4. Predecessors among the Romantic writers such 2. Until the death of Patroclus, he refused to par-as Byron. ticipate in the Trojan War; hence he is similar to 5. Region in Greece where Bvron died. modern intellectual leaders who refuse to speak 6. The Gulf of Spezia in Italy, where Percy Bysshe out about their frustrated sense of alienation. Shelley was drowned.

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STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE / 137 3

145 Or are we easier, to have read, O Obermann!7 the sad, stern page,

Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head

From the fierce tempest of thine age

In the lone brakes0 of Fontainebleau, thickets no Or chalets near the Alpine snow?

Ye slumber in your silent grave!

The world, which for an idle day

Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds0 away. mourning clothes 155 The eternal trifler8 breaks your spell;

But we�we learnt your lore too well! Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,

More fortunate, alas! than we,

Which without hardness will be sage,

160 And gay without frivolity. Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;

But, while we wait, allow our tears! Allow them! We admire with awe

The exulting thunder of your race;

165 You give the universe your law,

You triumph over time and space!

Your pride of life, your tireless powers,

We laud them, but they are not ours. We are like children reared in shade

i7o Beneath some old-world abbey wall,

Forgotten in a forest glade,

And secret from the eyes of all.

Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves,

Their abbey, and its close0 of graves! enclosure 175 But, where the road runs near the stream,

Oft through the trees they catch a glance

Of passing troops in the sun's beam�

Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!

Forth to the world those soldiers fare,

i8o To life, to cities, and to war! And through the wood, another way,

Faint bugle notes from far are borne,

Where hunters gather, staghounds bay,

Round some fair forest-lodge at morn.

185 Gay dames are there, in sylvan green; Laughter and cries�those notes between!

7. Melancholy hero of Obermann (1804), a novel 8. The sciolist, as in line 99. by the French writer Etienne Senancour.

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137 4 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

The banners flashing through the trees Make their blood dance and chain their eyes; That bugle music on the breeze

190 Arrests them with a charmed surprise. Banner by turns and bugle woo:

Ye shy recluses, follow too!

O children, what do ye reply?� "Action and pleasure, will ye roam