Читать книгу Poems - Arnold Matthew - Страница 11

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Artist, whose hand, with horror winged, hath torn

From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung

The prodigy of full-blown crime among

Valleys and men to middle fortune born,

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.”