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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE FUTURE, by MATTHEW ARNOLD Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: A wanderer is a man from his birth Last Line: Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. Subject(s): Future; Conduct Of Life | |||
A wanderer is a man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the River of Time. Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light, Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream. As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been. Whether he wakes Where the snowy mountainous pass Echoing the screams of the eagles Hems in its gorges the bed Of the new-born clear-flowing stream: Whether he first sees light Where the river in gleaming rings Sluggishly winds through the plain: Whether in sound of the swallowing sea: -- As in the world on the banks So is the mind of man. Vainly does each as he glides Fable and dream Of the lands which the River of Time Had left ere he woke on its breast, Or shall reach when his eyes have been clos'd. Only the tract where he sails He wots of: only the thoughts, Rais'd by the objects he passes, are his. Who can see the green Earth any more As she was by the sources of Time? Who imagines her fields as they lay In the sunshine, unworn by the plough? Who thinks as they thought, The tribes who then roam'd on her breast, Her vigorous primitive sons? What girl Now reads in her bosom as clear As Rebekah read, when she sate At eve by the palm-shaded well? Who guards in her breast As deep, as pellucid a spring Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure? What Bard, At the height of his vision, can deem Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing as Moses felt, When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck of the Spirit like him? This tract which the River of Time Now flows through with us, is the Plain. Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. Border'd by cities and hoarse With a thousand cries is its stream. And we on our breast, our minds Are confus'd as the cries which we hear, Changing and shots as the sights which we see. And we say that repose has fled For ever the course of the River of Time. That cities will crowd to its edge In a blacker incessanter line; That the din will be more on its banks, Denser the trade on its stream, Flatter the plain where it flows, Fiercer the sun overhead. That never will those on its breast See an ennobling sight, Drink of the feeling of quiet again. But what was before us we know not, And we know not what shall succeed. Haply, the River of Time, As it grows, as the towns on its marge Fling their wavering lights On a wider statelier stream -- May acquire, if not the calm Of its early mountainous shore, Yet a solemn peace of its own. And the width of the waters, the hush Of the grey expanse where he floats, Freshening its current and spotted with foam As it draws to the Ocean, may strike Peace to the soul of the man on its breast: As the pale Waste widens around him -- As the banks fade dimmer away -- As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD by MATTHEA HARVEY SLOWLY: I FREQUENTLY SLOWLY WISH by LYN HEJINIAN MY LIFE: YET WE INSIST THAT LIFE IS FULL OF HAPPY CHANCE by LYN HEJINIAN CHAPTER HEADING by ERNEST HEMINGWAY PUNK HALF PANTHER by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA A CERTAIN MAN by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA GREEN-STRIPED MELONS by JANE HIRSHFIELD LIKE THE SMALL HOLE BY THE PATH-SIDE SOMETHING LIVES IN by JANE HIRSHFIELD |
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