Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain?
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing's fire
20 Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire??
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.
1849 1852
The Buried Life
Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
5 We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
io And turn those limpid eyes on mine, And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
15 To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men concealed
Their thoughts, for fear that if revealed
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
20 I knew they lived and moved Tricked0 in disguises, alien to the rest dressed lipOf men, and alien to themselves?and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast! But we, my love!?doth a like spell benumb
25 Our hearts, our voices??must we too be dumb?
Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
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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,
