Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold

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Macmillan, 1896 - 510 pages
 

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Page 228 - THE sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits ; — on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Page 280 - O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. 170 Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds...
Page 228 - But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
Page 258 - With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern.
Page 292 - He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen — on this iron time Of 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...
Page 171 - Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam; Where the salt weed sways in the stream; Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round, Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground...
Page 282 - And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest. Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made : And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.
Page 292 - 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 : Thou ailest here, and here ! He look'd on Europe's dying hour Of fitful dream and feverish power ; His eye plunged down the weltering strife.
Page 218 - Philomela Hark! ah, the Nightingale! The tawny-throated! Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark — what pain! O Wanderer from a Grecian shore, Still, after many years, in distant lands, Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain — Say, will it never heal...
Page 323 - Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. Their faith, my tears, the world deride— I come to shed them at their side.

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