Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Matthew Arnold (18221888)Morality
WE cannot kindle when we will | |
The fire which in the heart resides: | |
The spirit bloweth and is still, | |
In mystery our soul abides. | |
But tasks in hours of insight will’d | 5 |
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill’d. | |
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 t’were done. | 10 |
Not till the hours of light return, | |
All we have built do we discern. | |
Then when the clouds are off the soul, | |
When thou dost bask in Nature’s eye, | |
Ask, how she view’d thy self-control, | 15 |
Thy struggling task’d morality; | |
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air | |
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. | |
And she, whose censure thou dost dread, | |
Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, | 20 |
See, on her face a glow is spread, | |
A strong emotion on her cheek! | |
“Ah, child!” she cries, “that strife divine, | |
Whence was it, for it is not mine. | |
“There is no effort on my brow, | 25 |
I do not strive, I do not weep; | |
I rush with the swift spheres and glow | |
In joy, and when I will, I sleep. | |
Yet that severe, that earnest air, | |
I saw, I felt it once—but where? | 30 |
“I knew not yet the gauge of time, | |
Nor wore the manacles of space; | |
I felt it in some other clime, | |
I saw it in some other place. | |
’Twas when the heavenly house I trod, | 35 |
And lay upon the breast of God.” | |