Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Shakespeare

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,

Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill

That to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

Planting his stedfast footsteps in the sea,

Making the Heaven of Heavens his dwelling-place,

Spares but the cloudy border of his base

To the foil'd searching of mortality:

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,

Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,

Didst walk on Earth unguess'd at. Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,

All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,

Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.

Crouch'd on the pavement close by Belgrave Square

A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;

A babe was in her arms, and at her side

A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,

Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied

Across, and begg'd and came back satisfied.

The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;

She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,

Of sharers in a common human fate.

She turns from that cold succour, which attneds

The unknown little from the unknowing great,

And points us to a better time than ours.

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize

Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,

But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,

Man's fundamental life: if to despise

The barren optimistic sophistries

Of comfortable moles, whom what they do

Teaches the limit of the just and true--

And for such doing have no need of eyes:

If sadness at teh long heart-wasting show

Wherein earth's great ones are disquieted:

If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow

The armies of the homeless and unfed:--

If these are yours, if this is what you are,

Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.