Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/44

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6
SONNETS.

Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn,—
Say, what shall calm us when such guests intrude
Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
Shall breathless glades, cheered by shy Dian's horn,


Cold-bubbling springs, or caves? Not so! The soul
Breasts her own griefs; and, urged too fiercely, says,
"Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man


May be by man effaced; man can control
To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he can."




TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848.

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, prized and practised by too few,
But prized, but loved, 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 they require not eyes);


If sadness at the 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.