Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | XXVI. Melancholy From Rugby Chapel | By Matthew Arnold (18221888) |
| COLDLY, sadly descends | |
The autumn evening! The field | |
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts | |
Of witherd leaves, and the elms, | |
Fade into dimness apace, | 5 |
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, | 10 |
Through the gathering darkness, arise | |
The chapel walls, in whose bound | |
Thou, my father! art laid
. | |
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O strong soul, by what shore | |
Tarriest thou now? For that force, | 15 |
Surely, has not been left vain! | |
Somewhere, surely, afar, | |
In the sounding labour-house vast | |
Of being, is practised that strength, | |
Zealous, beneficent, firm!
| 20 |
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What is the course of the life | |
Of mortal men on the earth? | |
Most men eddy about | |
Here and thereeat and drink, | |
Chatter and love and hate, | 25 |
Gather and squander, are raised | |
Aloft, are hurld in the dust, | |
Striving blindly, achieving | |
Nothing; and then, they die | |
Perish! and no one asks | 30 |
Who or what they have been, | |
More than he asks what waves, | |
In the moonlit solitudes mild | |
Of the midmost Ocean, have swelld, | |
Foamd for a moment, and gone
. | 35 | | |
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