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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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
