Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold Part 70

And lie thou there, My laurel bough!

Scornful Apollo's ensign, lie thou there!

Though thou hast been my shade in the world's heat-- Though I have loved thee, lived in honouring thee-- Yet lie thou there, My laurel bough!

I am weary of thee.

I am weary of the solitude Where he who bears thee must abide-- Of the rocks of Parna.s.sus, Of the rocks of Delphi, Of the moonlit peaks, and the caves.

Thou guardest them, Apollo!

Over the grave of the slain Pytho, Though young, intolerably severe!

Thou keepest aloof the profane, But the solitude oppresses thy votary!

The jars of men reach him not in thy valley-- But can life reach him?

Thou fencest him from the mult.i.tude-- Who will fence him from himself?

He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents, And the beating of his own heart.

The air is thin, the veins swell, The temples tighten and throb there-- Air! air!

Take thy bough, set me free from my solitude; I have been enough alone!

Where shall thy votary fly then? back to men?-- But they will gladly welcome him once more, And help him to unbend his too tense thought, And rid him of the presence of himself, And keep their friendly chatter at his ear, And haunt him, till the absence from himself, That other torment, grow unbearable; And he will fly to solitude again, And he will find its air too keen for him, And so change back; and many thousand times Be miserably bandied to and fro Like a sea-wave, betwixt the world and thee, Thou young, implacable G.o.d! and only death Can cut his oscillations short, and so Bring him to poise. There is no other way.

And yet what days were those, Parmenides!

When we were young, when we could number friends In all the Italian cities like ourselves, When with elated hearts we join'd your train.

Ye Sun-born Virgins! on the road of truth.[32]

Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought Nor outward things were closed and dead to us; But we received the shock of mighty thoughts On simple minds with a pure natural joy; And if the sacred load oppress'd our brain, We had the power to feel the pressure eased, The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again, In the delightful commerce of the world.

We had not lost our balance then, nor grown Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy.

The smallest thing could give us pleasure then-- The sports of the country-people, A flute-note from the woods, Sunset over the sea; Seed-time and harvest, The reapers in the corn, The vinedresser in his vineyard, The village-girl at her wheel.

Fulness of life and power of feeling, ye Are for the happy, for the souls at ease, Who dwell on a firm basis of content!

But he, who has outlived his prosperous days-- But he, whose youth fell on a different world From that on which his exiled age is thrown-- Whose mind was fed on other food, was train'd By other rules than are in vogue to-day-- Whose habit of thought is fix'd, who will not change, But, in a world he loves not, must subsist In ceaseless opposition, be the guard Of his own breast, fetter'd to what he guards, That the world win no mastery over him-- Who has no friend, no fellow left, not one; Who has no minute's breathing s.p.a.ce allow'd To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy---- Joy and the outward world must die to him, As they are dead to me.

_A long pause, during which_ EMPEDOCLES _remains motionless, plunged in thought. The night deepens.

He moves forward and gazes round him, and proceeds_:--

And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines!

Have you, too, survived yourselves?

Are you, too, what I fear to become?

You, too, once lived; You too moved joyfully Among august companions, In an older world, peopled by G.o.ds, In a mightier order, The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.

But now, ye kindle Your lonely, cold-shining lights, Unwilling lingerers In the heavenly wilderness, For a younger, ign.o.ble world; And renew, by necessity, Night after night your courses, In echoing, unnear'd silence, Above a race you know not-- Uncaring and undelighted, Without friend and without home; Weary like us, though not Weary with our weariness.

No, no, ye stars! there is no death with you, No languor, no decay! languor and death, They are with me, not you! ye are alive-- Ye, and the pure dark ether where ye ride Brilliant above me! And thou, fiery world, That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount Upon whose charr'd and quaking crust I stand-- Thou, too, brimmest with life!--the sea of cloud, That heaves its white and billowy vapours up To moat this isle of ashes from the world, Lives; and that other fainter sea, far down, O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams leads To Etna's Liparean sister-fires And the long dusky line of Italy-- That mild and luminous floor of waters lives, With held-in joy swelling its heart; I only, Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has fail'd, I, who have not, like these, in solitude Maintain'd courage and force, and in myself Nursed an immortal vigour--I alone Am dead to life and joy, therefore I read In all things my own deadness.

_A long silence. He continues_:--

Oh, that I could glow like this mountain!

Oh, that my heart bounded with the swell of the sea!

Oh, that my soul were full of light as the stars!

Oh, that it brooded over the world like the air!

But no, this heart will glow no more; thou art A living man no more, Empedocles!

Nothing but a devouring flame of thought-- But a naked, eternally restless mind!

_After a pause_:--

To the elements it came from Everything will return-- Our bodies to earth, Our blood to water, Heat to fire, Breath to air.

They were well born, they will be well entomb'd-- But mind?...

And we might gladly share the fruitful stir Down in our mother earth's miraculous womb; Well would it be With what roll'd of us in the stormy main; We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air, Or with the nimble, radiant life of fire.

But mind, but thought-- If these have been the master part of us-- Where will _they_ find their parent element?

What will receive _them_, who will call _them_ home?

But we shall still be in them, and they in us, And we shall be the strangers of the world, And they will be our lords, as they are now; And keep us prisoners of our consciousness, And never let us clasp and feel the All But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils.

And we shall be unsatisfied as now; And we shall feel the agony of thirst, The ineffable longing for the life of life Baffled for ever; and still thought and mind Will hurry us with them on their homeless march, Over the unallied unopening earth, Over the unrecognising sea; while air Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth, And fire repel us from its living waves.

And then we shall unwillingly return Back to this meadow of calamity, This uncongenial place, this human life; And in our individual human state Go through the sad probation all again, To see if we will poise our life at last, To see if we will now at last be true To our own only true, deep-buried selves, Being one with which we are one with the whole world; Or whether we will once more fall away Into some bondage of the flesh or mind, Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze Forged by the imperious lonely thinking-power.

And each succeeding age in which we are born Will have more peril for us than the last; Will goad our senses with a sharper spur, Will fret our minds to an intenser play, Will make ourselves harder to be discern'd.

And we shall struggle awhile, gasp and rebel-- And we shall fly for refuge to past times, Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness; And the reality will pluck us back, Knead us in its hot hand, and change our nature And we shall feel our powers of effort flag, And rally them for one last fight--and fail; And we shall sink in the impossible strife, And be astray for ever.

Slave of sense I have in no wise been;--but slave of thought?...

And who can say: I have been always free, Lived ever in the light of my own soul?-- I cannot; I have lived in wrath and gloom, Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man, Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light.

But I have not grown easy in these bonds-- But I have not denied what bonds these were.

Yea, I take myself to witness, That I have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth, Nursed no delusion, Allow'd no fear!

And therefore, O ye elements! I know-- Ye know it too--it hath been granted me Not to die wholly, not to be all enslaved.

I feel it in this hour. The numbing cloud Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free.

Is it but for a moment?

--Ah, boil up, ye vapours!

Leap and roar, thou sea of fire!

My soul glows to meet you.

Ere it flag, ere the mists Of despondency and gloom Rush over it again, Receive me, save me!

[_He plunges into the crater._

_Callicles_

(_from below_)

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, Thick breaks the red flame; All Etna heaves fiercely Her forest-clothed frame.

Not here, O Apollo!

Are haunts meet for thee.

But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea,

Where the moon-silver'd inlets Send far their light voice Up the still vale of Thisbe, O speed, and rejoice!

On the sward at the cliff-top Lie strewn the white flocks, On the cliff-side the pigeons Roost deep in the rocks.

In the moonlight the shepherds, Soft lull'd by the rills, Lie wrapt in their blankets Asleep on the hills.

--What forms are these coming So white through the gloom?

What garments out-glistening The gold-flower'd broom?

What sweet-breathing presence Out-perfumes the thyme?