Saturday, April 5, 2008

Quotations #2: Matthew Arnold

Here is one of my favorite poems of all time. It is so heart wrenching and beautiful. The sounds and pauses of the last line would work without even understanding the words.

"To Marguerite"

"Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour--

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain--
Oh, might our marges meet again!

Who ordered, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?--
A god, a god their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea."

2 comments:

Jill said...

Beautiful Poem.

Anonymous said...

This is lovely and sad. I assume that Matthew Arnold is the poet? I'd like to remember this.