Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)Human Life
W
Life’s voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
“I have kept uninfringed my nature’s law;
The inly-written chart thou gavest me,
To guide me, I have steer’d by to the end”?
On life’s incognisable sea,
To too exact a steering of our way;
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,
If some fair coast have lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail’d us to keep company.
At random, and not steer by rule.
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow’d in vain.
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance’s fool.
Of torn-up water, on the main,
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow’d path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel’s prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;
As, charter’d by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night,
The joys which were not for our use design’d;—
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.