Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Matthew Arnold. 18221888749. To Marguerite
YES: in the sea of life enisled, | |
With echoing straits between us thrown. | |
Dotting the shoreless watery wild, | |
We mortal millions live alone. | |
The islands feel the enclasping flow, | 5 |
And then their endless bounds they know. | |
But when the moon their hollows lights, | |
And they are swept by balms of spring, | |
And in their glens, on starry nights, | |
The nightingales divinely sing; | 10 |
And lovely notes, from shore to shore, | |
Across the sounds and channels pour; | |
O then a longing like despair | |
Is to their farthest caverns sent! | |
For surely once, they feel, we were | 15 |
Parts of a single continent. | |
Now round us spreads the watery plain— | |
O might our marges meet again! | |
Who order’d that their longing’s fire | |
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d? | 20 |
Who renders vain their deep desire?— | |
A God, a God their severance ruled; | |
And bade betwixt their shores to be | |
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea. |