Is she wrong'd?-To the rescue of her honour, My heart! Is she poor? What cost it to be styled a donor? Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part. But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her! ("Nay, list!"— bade Kate the queen ; And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER I SAID I Then, dearest, since 't is so, Since now at length my fate I know, Since nothing all my love avails, Since all, my life seem'd meant for, fails, Since this was written and needs must be My whole heart rises up to bless Your name in pride and thankfulness! And this beside, if you will not blame, II My mistress bent that brow of hers; With life or death in the balance: right! My last thought was at least not vain : Shall be together, breathe and ride, So, one day more am I deified. Who knows but the world may end to-night? III Hush! if you saw some western cloud All billowy-bosom'd, over-bow'd By many benedictions - sun's And so, you, looking and loving best, Conscious grew, your passion drew Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too, Down on you, near and yet more near, Till flesh must fade for heaven was here! Thus leant she and linger'd-joy and fear! Thus lay she a moment on my breast. IV Then we began to ride. My soul What need to strive with a life awry? V Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds? Saw other regions, cities new, As the world rush'd by on either side. This present of theirs with the hopeful past! VI What hand and brain went ever pair'd? What heart alike conceived and dared? What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen? We ride and I see her bosom heave. There's many a crown for who can reach. They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. VII What does it all mean, poet? Well, And pace them in rhyme so, side by side. 'Tis something, nay 't is much: but then, Have you yourself what's best for men? poor, sick, old ere your time Nearer one whit your own sublime Than we who never have turn'd a rhyme? Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride. Are you VIII And you, great sculptor — so, you gave You acquiesce, and shall I repine ? 66 Greatly his opera's strains intend, But in music we know how fashions end!" I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine. IX Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate My being had I sign'd the bond Still one must lead some life beyond, Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. This foot once planted on the goal, This glory-garland round my soul, Could I descry such? Try and test! I sink back shuddering from the quest. X And yet We, fix'd so, ever should so abide? And heaven just prove that I and she I ΧΙ MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888) T is hard to think of Matthew Arnold the schoolmaster, the literary critic, the author of "Literature and Dogma," and "St. Paul and Protestantism," as a writer of passionate if melancholy love songs such as "Tristram and Iseult" and "Switzerland." Switzerland." But there are the songs, filled with sadness, yet inspired, too, with a courage and a hope, and breathing a kind of melancholy joy which youth fairly hugs to its breast. Youth is melancholy, yet courageous; and Matthew Arnold seems peculiarly the poet of disappointed youth. He lived to do and be what we know. We shall live and do and be, though for the moment we seem to carry in our arms a dead infant, and all around is a boundless waste. We read him because we feel that he has beheld the same youthful mirages that we have beheld, he has yearned for the same love that we thought we could not do without, and he has walked into the same valley of barrenness and chilly night that we are in. The sentiment of melancholy is ingrained in the human heart, and it seems as if out of it alone could come conceptions of the deepest poetic beauty, the truest sympathy with humanity. The sadness of Matthew Arnold is the universal sadness of the human heart; and as the |