Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse. Two Poems from Magazines, 1855. Matthew Arnold. 1909. The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840-1867

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Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840–1867. 1909.

Two Poems from Magazines, 1855

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

[First published in Fraser’s Magazine, April, 1855. Reprinted 1867.]

THROUGH Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross’d, and slow we ride,	5
Through forest, up the mountain-side.

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guiers’ stream complain,	10
Where that wet smoke among the woods
Over his boiling cauldron broods.

Swift 1 rush the spectral vapours white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing—then blotting from our sight.	15
Halt! through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.

Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony forest-way.	20
At last the encircling trees retire;
Look! through the showery twilight grey
What pointed roofs are these advance?
A palace of the Kings of France?

Approach, for what we seek is here.	25
Alight and sparely sup and wait
For rest in this outbuilding near;
Then cross the sward and reach that gate;
Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come
To the Carthusians’ world-famed home.	30

The silent courts, where night and day
Into their stone-carved basins cold
The splashing icy fountains play,
The humid corridors behold,
Where ghostlike in the deepening night	35
Cowl’d forms brush by in gleaming white.

The chapel, where no organ’s peal
Invests the stern and naked prayer.
With penitential cries they kneel
And wrestle; rising then, with bare	40
And white uplifted faces stand,
Passing the Host from hand to hand;

Each takes; and then his visage wan
Is buried in his cowl once more.
The cells—the suffering Son of Man	45
Upon the wall! the knee-worn floor!
And, where they sleep, that wooden bed,
Which shall their coffin be, when dead.

The library, where tract and tome
Not to feed priestly pride are there,	50
To hymn the conquering march of Rome,
Nor yet to amuse, as ours are;
They paint of souls the inner strife,
Their drops of blood, their death in life.

The garden, overgrown—yet mild	55
Those fragrant herbs are flowering there!
Strong children of the Alpine wild
Whose culture is the brethren’s care;
Of human tasks their only one,
And cheerful works beneath the sun.	60

Those halls too, destined to contain
Each its own pilgrim host of old,
From England, Germany, or Spain—
All are before me! I behold
The House, the Brotherhood austere!	65
And what am I, that I am here?

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged 2 its faith, and trimm’d its fire,
Show’d me the high white 3 star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire;	70
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb?

Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign’d!	75
I come not here to be your foe.
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;

Not as their friend or child I speak!
But as on some far northern strand,	80
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone—
For both were faiths, and both are gone.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,	85
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Their faith, my tears, the world deride;
I come to shed them at their side.	90

Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl’d forms, and fence me round, 4
Till I possess my soul again!
Till free my thoughts before me roll,	95
Not chafed by hourly false control.

For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time’s exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a pass’d mode, an outworn theme—	100
As if the world had ever 5 had
A faith, or sciolists been sad.

Ah, if it be pass’d, take away,
At least, the restlessness—the pain!
Be man henceforth no more a prey	105
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone—
Ah, leave us not the fret 6 alone!

But, if you cannot give us ease,
Last of the race of them who grieve	110
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent—the best are silent now.

Achilles ponders in his tent,	115
The kings of modern thought are dumb;
Silent they are, though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.	120

Our 7 fathers water’d with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail;
Their voices were in all men’s ears
Who pass’d within their puissant hail.
Still the same Ocean round us raves,	125
But we 8 stand mute and watch the waves.

For what avail’d it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men?
Say, have their sons obtain’d 9 more joys?
Say, is life lighter now than then?	130
The sufferers died, they left their pain;
The pangs which tortured them remain.

What helps it now, that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mock’d the smart,
Through Europe to the Aetolian shore	135
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?

What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,	140
Musical through Italian trees
That fringe thy soft 10 blue Spezzian bay?
Inheritors of thy distress
Have restless hearts one throb the less?

Or are we easier, to have read,	145
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd’st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or chalets near the Alpine snow?	150

Ye slumber in your 11 silent grave!
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your 12 mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung 13 her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;	155
But we—we learnt your lore too well!

There may, perhaps, yet dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.	160
Sons of the world, oh, haste those years;
But, till they rise, allow our tears!

Allow them! We admire with awe
The exulting thunder of your race;
You give the universe your law,	165
You triumph over time and space.
Your pride of life, your tireless powers,
We mark them, 14 but they are not ours.

We are like children rear’d in shade
Beneath some old-world abbey wall	170
Forgotten in a forest-glade
And secret from the eyes of all;
Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves,
Their abbey, and its close of graves.

But where the road runs near the stream,	175
Oft through the trees they catch a glance
Of passing troops in the sun’s beam—
Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!
Forth to the world those soldiers 15 fare,
To life, to cities, and to war.	180

And through the woods, another way,
Faint bugle-notes from far are borne,
Where hunters gather, staghounds bay,
Round some old forest-lodge at morn;
Gay dames are there in sylvan green,	185
Laughter and cries—those notes between!

The banners flashing through the trees
Make their blood dance and chain their eyes;
That bugle-music on the breeze
Arrests them with a charm’d surprise.	190
Banner by turns and bugle woo:
Ye shy recluses, follow too!

O children, what do ye reply?—
‘Action and pleasure, will ye roam
Through these secluded dells to cry	195
And call us? but too late ye come!
Too late for us your call ye blow
Whose bent was taken long ago.

‘Long since we pace this shadow’d nave;
We watch those yellow tapers shine,	200
Emblems of hope over 16 the grave,
In the high altar’s depth divine;
The organ carries to our ear
Its accents of another sphere.

‘Fenced early in this cloistral round	205
Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,
How should we grow in other ground?
How should we flower in foreign air?
Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease!
And leave our desert 17 to its peace!’	210