Fragment Of Chorus Of A Dejaneira

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts,
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the Gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern
Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirers holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The Gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturbd,
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home;
No end but this you praise.

But him, on whom, in the prime
Of life, with vigour undimmd,
With unspent mind, and a soul
Unworn, undebased, undecayd,
Mournfully grating, the gates
Of the city of death have for ever closed,
Him, I count him, well-starrd.

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He is best remembered for his poetry, including works like 'Dover Beach,' and his influence on literary and social criticism. Arnold's work often grappled with the social issues and the loss of faith in the modern age, making him a central figure in the transition from Romanticism to Modernism in literature.

Matthew Arnold

To A Gipsy Child By The Sea-Shore

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To A Gipsy Child By The Sea-Shore

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Who taught this pleading to unpractisd eyes?
Who hid such import in an infants gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?

Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;
The swinging waters, and the clusterd pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
Nor weariness, the full-fed souls annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain:

Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mothers breast, that knows not thee;
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Obermann

In front the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack
Close oer it, in the air.

Behind are the abandond baths
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley paths;
The mists are on the Rhone,

The white mists rolling like a sea.
I hear the torrents roar.
Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee!
I feel thee near once more.

I turn thy leaves: I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded oer thy soul.

Fly hence, poor Wretch, whoeer thou art,
Condemnd to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without:

A fever in these pages burns
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Stanzas From The Grande Chartreuse

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
The autumnal evening darkens round,
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While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling cauldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing then blotting from our sight!
Halt through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
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A Summer Night

In the deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world, but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
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Down at the far horizon's rim,
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And to my mind the thought
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Houses, with long wide sweep,
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Behind, through the soft air,
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In Utrumque Paratus

If, in the silent mind of One all-pure,
At first imagind lay
The sacred world; and by procession sure
From those still deeps, in form and colour drest,
Seasons alternating, and night and day,
The long-musd thought to north south east and west
Took then its all-seen way:

O waking on a world which thus-wise springs!
Whether it needs thee count
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Ages or hours: O waking on Lifes stream!
By lonely pureness to the all-pure Fount
(Only by this thou canst) the colourd dream
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Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow;
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The New Sirens - A Palinode

In the cedar shadow sleeping,
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Oft at noon have lurd me, creeping
From your darkend palace rooms:
I, who in your train at morning
Strolld and sang with joyful mind,
Heard, at evening, sounds of warning;
Heard the hoarse boughs labour in the wind.

Who are they, O pensive Graces,
For I dreamd they wore your forms
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Who, when ships are that way tending,
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To all reefs and narrows wending,
With blown tresses, and with beckoning hands

Yet I see, the howling levels
Of the deep are not your lair;
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Are less lonely than they were.
In a Tyrian galley steering
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