Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall.
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Creep into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earths shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
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.
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
The sea is calm tonight.
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.
Why faintest thou! I wanderd till I died.
Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.
Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill,
Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside.
Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mothers train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine.
Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;
I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon lifes headlong train;
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crushd, less quick to spring again.
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing, he is dead!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beautys heightening.
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, tis no foot of unfamiliar men>
Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days;
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.
The great apostle of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay.
Trending Quotes Topics:
One liners Quotes Moving on Quotes Trust Quotes Wedding blessings Quotes Pregnancy Quotes Hard Work Quotes Soulmates Quotes Farewells Quotes Baseball Quotes Smile Quotes |
|
 | Matthew Arnold Quotes |
