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,

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,

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,

Surely, has not been left vain!

Somewhere, surely, afar,

In the sounding labour-house vast

Of being, is practised that strength,

Zealous, beneficent, firm!…

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,

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

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….