Читать книгу Poems - Arnold Matthew - Страница 36

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Mist clogs the sunshine.

Smoky dwarf houses

Hem me round everywhere;

A vague dejection

Weighs down my soul.

Yet, while I languish,

Everywhere countless

Prospects unroll themselves,

And countless beings

Pass countless moods.

Far hence, in Asia,

On the smooth convent-roofs,

On the gold terraces,

Of holy Lassa,

Bright shines the sun.

Gray time-worn marbles

Hold the pure Muses;

In their cool gallery,

By yellow Tiber,

They still look fair.

Strange unloved uproar[A] Shrills round their portal; Yet not on Helicon Kept they more cloudless Their noble calm.

Through sun-proof alleys

In a lone, sand-hemmed

City of Africa,

A blind, led beggar,

Age-bowed, asks alms.

No bolder robber

Erst abode ambushed

Deep in the sandy waste;

No clearer eyesight

Spied prey afar.

Saharan sand-winds

Seared his keen eyeballs;

Spent is the spoil he won.

For him the present

Holds only pain.

Two young, fair lovers,

Where the warm June-wind,

Fresh from the summer fields

Plays fondly round them,

Stand, tranced in joy.

With sweet, joined voices,

And with eyes brimming,

“Ah!” they cry, “Destiny,

Prolong the present!

Time, stand still here!”

The prompt stern goddess

Shakes her head, frowning:

Time gives his hour-glass

Its due reversal;

Their hour is gone.

With weak indulgence

Did the just goddess

Lengthen their happiness,

She lengthened also

Distress elsewhere.

The hour whose happy

Unalloyed moments

I would eternalize,

Ten thousand mourners

Well pleased see end.

The bleak, stern hour,

Whose severe moments

I would annihilate,

Is passed by others

In warmth, light, joy.

Time, so complained of,

Who to no one man

Shows partiality,

Brings round to all men

Some undimmed hours.

[A] Written during the siege of Rome by the French, 1849.