| Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840–1867. 1909. | | | | Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems | | To Marguerite, in Returning a Volume of the Letters of Ortis |
| | [First published 1852. Reprinted 1853, ’54, ’57.]
YES: 1 in the sea of life enisl’d, | |
| 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; | |
| |
| Oh 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— | |
| Oh 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 rul’d; | |
| And bade betwixt their shores to be | |
| The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea. | |
| | | Note 1. To Marguerite Title] Switzerland. V. To Marguerite 1853. Switzerland. VI. To Marguerite 1854. Switzerland. VII. Isolation 1857. [back] | | |
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