To the just-pausing Genius3 we remit
150 Our worn-out life, and are?what we have been. Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire;
Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead!
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!
155 The generations of thy peers are fled,
And we ourselves shall go;
But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvill's page,
i6o Because thou hadst?what we, alas! have not. For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
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,
