| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XXVI. Melancholy
From ‘Rugby Chapel’ | | By Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) |
| |
COLDLY, sadly descends | |
| The autumn evening! The field | |
| Strewn with its dank yellow drifts | |
| Of wither’d leaves, and the elms, | |
| Fade into dimness apace, | 5 |
| Silent;—hardly a shout | |
| From a few boys late at their play! | |
| The lights come out in the street, | |
| In the school-room windows; but cold, | |
| Solemn, unlighted, austere, | 10 |
| Through the gathering darkness, arise | |
| The chapel walls, in whose bound | |
| Thou, my father! art laid…. | |
| |
| O strong soul, by what shore | |
| Tarriest thou now? For that force, | 15 |
| Surely, has not been left vain! | |
| Somewhere, surely, afar, | |
| In the sounding labour-house vast | |
| Of being, is practised that strength, | |
| Zealous, beneficent, firm!… | 20 |
| |
| What is the course of the life | |
| Of mortal men on the earth?— | |
| Most men eddy about | |
| Here and there—eat and drink, | |
| Chatter and love and hate, | 25 |
| Gather and squander, are raised | |
| Aloft, are hurl’d in the dust, | |
| Striving blindly, achieving | |
| Nothing; and then, they die— | |
| Perish! and no one asks | 30 |
| Who or what they have been, | |
| More than he asks what waves, | |
| In the moonlit solitudes mild | |
| Of the midmost Ocean, have swell’d, | |
| Foam’d for a moment, and gone…. | 35 | | | |
|
|
