MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 9, 1 June 1884, Page 12

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

ON HEARING HIM READ HIS POEMS IN BOSTON. A stranger, schooled to gentle arts, He slept before the curious throng, His path into our waiting hearts Already paved by song. Full well we knew his choristers Whose plaintive voices haunt our rest, Those sable vested harbingers Of melancholy guest. We smile on him for love of these, With eyes that swift grew dim to scan Beneath the veil of courteous ease The faith-forsaken man. To his sad gaze the weary shows And fashions of our vain estate, Our shallow pain and false repose, Our barren love and hate, Are shadows in a land of graves, Where creeds, the bubbles of a dream, Flash each and fade, like meeting waves Upon a moonlight stream. Yet loyal to his own despair, Erect beneath a darkened sky, He deems the thorniest truth more fair Than any gilded lie; And stands, the spectre of his age, With hopeless hands that bind the sheaf, Claiming God’s work without His wage, The bard of unbelief.