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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=456507" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Obermann Once More</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Glion?--Ah, twenty years, it cuts<br>All meaning from a name!<br>White houses prank where once were huts.<br>Glion, but not the same!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And yet I know not! All unchanged<br>The turf, the pines, the sky!<br>The hills in their old order ranged;<br>The lake, with Chillon by!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And, 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff<br>And stony mounts the way,<br>The crackling husk-heaps burn, as if<br>I left them yesterday!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Across the valley, on that slope,<br>The huts of Avant shine!<br>lts pines, under their branches, ope<br>Ways for the pasturing kine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Full-foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare,<br>Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass,<br>Invite to rest the traveller there<br>Before he climb the pass--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown<br>With yellow spires aflame;<br>Whence drops the path to Allière down,<br>And walls where Byron came,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> By their green river, who doth change<br>His birth-name just below;<br>Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grange<br>Nursed by his pastoral flow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> But stop!--to fetch back thoughts that stray<br>Beyond this gracious bound,<br>The cone of Jaman, pale and gray,<br>See, in the blue profound!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Ah, Jaman! delicately tall<br>Above his sun-warm'd firs--<br>What thoughts to me his rocks recall,<br>What memories he stirs!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And who but thou must be, in truth,<br>Obermann! with me here?<br>Thou master of my wandering youth,<br>But left this many a year!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Yes, I forget the world's work wrought,<br>Its warfare waged with pain;<br>An eremite with thee, in thought<br>Once more I slip my chain,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And to thy mountain-chalet come,<br>And lie beside its door,<br>And hear the wild bee's Alpine hum,<br>And thy sad, tranquil lore!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Again I feel the words inspire<br>Their mournful calm; serene,<br>Yet tinged with infinite desire<br>For all that might have been--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The harmony from which man swerved<br>Made his life's rule once more!<br>The universal order served,<br>Earth happier than before!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> --While thus I mused, night gently ran<br>Down over hill and wood.<br>Then, still and sudden, Obermann<br>On the grass near me stood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Those pensive features well I knew,<br>On my mind, years before,<br>Imaged so oft! imaged so true!<br>--A shepherd's garb he wore,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> A mountain-flower was in his hand,<br>A book was in his breast.<br>Bent on my face, with gaze which scann'd<br>My soul, his eyes did rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'And is it thou,' he cried, 'so long<br>Held by the world which we<br>Loved not, who turnest from the throng<br>Back to thy youth and me?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'And from thy world, with heart opprest,<br>Choosest thou now to turn?--<br>Ah me! we anchorites read things best,<br>Clearest their course discern!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Thou fledst me when the ungenial earth,<br>Man's work-place, lay in gloom.<br>Return'st thou in her hour of birth,<br>Of hopes and hearts in bloom?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Perceiv'st thou not the change of day?<br>Ah! Carry back thy ken,<br>What, some two thousand years! Survey<br>The world as it was then!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Like ours it look'd in outward air.<br>Its head was clear and true,<br>Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare,<br>No pause its action knew;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Stout was its arm, each thew and bone<br>Seem'd puissant and alive--<br>But, ah! its heart, its heart was stone,<br>And so it could not thrive!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'On that hard Pagan world disgust<br>And secret loathing fell.<br>Deep weariness and sated lust<br>Made human life a hell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,<br>The Roman noble lay;<br>He drove abroad, in furious guise,<br>Along the Appian way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,<br>And crown'd his hair with flowers--<br>No easier nor no quicker pass'd<br>The impracticable hours.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'The brooding East with awe beheld<br>Her impious younger world.<br>The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd,<br>And on her head was hurl'd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'The East bow'd low before the blast<br>In patient, deep disdain;<br>She let the legions thunder past,<br>And plunged in thought again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'So well she mused, a morning broke<br>Across her spirit grey;<br>A conquering, new-born joy awoke,<br>And fill'd her life with day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,<br>That runn'st from pole to pole<br>To seek a draught to slake thy thirst--<br>Go, seek it in thy soul!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'She heard it, the victorious West,<br>In crown and sword array'd!<br>She felt the void which mined her breast,<br>She shiver'd and obey'd.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword,<br>And laid her sceptre down;<br>Her stately purple she abhorr'd,<br>And her imperial crown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports,<br>Her artists could not please;<br>She tore her books, she shut her courts,<br>She fled her palaces;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Lust of the eye and pride of life<br>She left it all behind,<br>And hurried, torn with inward strife,<br>The wilderness to find.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Tears wash'd the trouble from her face!<br>She changed into a child!<br>'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood--a place<br>Of ruin--but she smiled!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Oh, had I lived in that great day,<br>How had its glory new<br>Fill'd earth and heaven, and caught away<br>My ravish'd spirit too!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'No thoughts that to the world belong<br>Had stood against the wave<br>Of love which set so deep and strong<br>From Christ's then open grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'No cloister-floor of humid stone<br>Had been too cold for me.<br>For me no Eastern desert lone<br>Had been too far to flee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'No lonely life had pass'd too slow,<br>When I could hourly scan<br>Upon his Cross, with head sunk low,<br>That nail'd, thorn-crowned Man!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Could see the Mother with her Child<br>Whose tender winning arts<br>Have to his little arms beguiled<br>So many wounded hearts!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'And centuries came and ran their course,<br>And unspent all that time<br>Still, still went forth that Child's dear force,<br>And still was at its prime.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Ay, ages long endured his span<br>Of life--'tis true received--<br>That gracious Child, that thorn-crown'd Man!<br>--He lived while we believed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'While we believed, on earth he went,<br>And open stood his grave.<br>Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent;<br>And Christ was by to save.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Now he is dead! Far hence he lies<br>In the lorn Syrian town;<br>And on his grave, with shining eyes,<br>The Syrian stars look down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'In vain men still, with hoping new,<br>Regard his death-place dumb,<br>And say the stone is not yet to,<br>And wait for words to come.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Ah, o'er that silent sacred land,<br>Of sun, and arid stone,<br>And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,<br>Sounds now one word alone!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Unduped of fancy, henceforth man<br>Must labour!--must resign<br>His all too human creeds, and scan<br>Simply the way divine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'But slow that tide of common thought,<br>Which bathed our life, retired;<br>Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,<br>And pulse by pulse expired.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Its frame yet stood without a breach<br>When blood and warmth were fled;<br>And still it spake its wonted speech--<br>But every word was dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'And oh, we cried, that on this corse<br>Might fall a freshening storm!<br>Rive its dry bones, and with new force<br>A new-sprung world inform!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> '--Down came the storm! O'er France it pass'd<br>In sheets of scathing fire;<br>All Europe felt that fiery blast,<br>And shook as it rush'd by her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Down came the storm! In ruins fell<br>The worn-out world we knew.<br>It pass'd, that elemental swell!<br>Again appear'd the blue;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky,<br>And what from heaven saw he?<br>Blocks of the past, like icebergs high,<br>Float on a rolling sea!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Upon them plies the race of man<br>All it before endeavour'd;<br>'Ye live,' I cried, 'ye work and plan,<br>And know not ye are sever'd!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''Poor fragments of a broken world<br>Whereon men pitch their tent!<br>Why were ye too to death not hurl'd<br>When your world's day was spent?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''That glow of central fire is done<br>Which with its fusing flame<br>Knit all your parts, and kept you one--<br>But ye, ye are the same!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''The past, its mask of union on,<br>Had ceased to live and thrive.<br>The past, its mask of union gone,<br>Say, is it more alive?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead,<br>Your social order too!<br>Where tarries he, the Power who said:<br>See, I make all things new?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''The millions suffer still, and grieve,<br>And what can helpers heal<br>With old-world cures men half believe<br>For woes they wholly feel?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''And yet men have such need of joy!<br>But joy whose grounds are true;<br>And joy that should all hearts employ<br>As when the past was new.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''Ah, not the emotion of that past,<br>Its common hope, were vain!<br>Some new such hope must dawn at last,<br>Or man must toss in pain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> ''But now the old is out of date,<br>The new is not yet born,<br>And who can be alone elate,<br>While the world lies forlorn?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Then to the wilderness I fled.--<br>There among Alpine snows<br>And pastoral huts I hid my head,<br>And sought and found repose.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'It was not yet the appointed hour.<br>Sad, patient, and resign'd,<br>I watch'd the crocus fade and flower,<br>I felt the sun and wind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'The day I lived in was not mine,<br>Man gets no second day.<br>In dreams I saw the future shine--<br>But ah! I could not stay!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Action I had not, followers, fame;<br>I pass'd obscure, alone.<br>The after-world forgets my name,<br>Nor do I wish it known.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Composed to bear, I lived and died,<br>And knew my life was vain.<br>With fate I murmur not, nor chide;<br>At Sèvres by the Seine</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> '(If Paris that brief flight allow)<br>My humble tomb explore!<br>It bears: Eternity, be thou<br>My refuge! and no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'But thou, whom fellowship of mood<br>Did make from haunts of strife<br>Come to my mountain-solitude,<br>And learn my frustrate life;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'O thou, who, ere thy flying span<br>Was past of cheerful youth,<br>Didst find the solitary man<br>And love his cheerless truth--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Despair not thou as I despair'd,<br>Nor be cold gloom thy prison!<br>Forward the gracious hours have fared,<br>And see! the sun is risen!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'He breaks the winter of the past;<br>A green, new earth appears.<br>Millions, whose life in ice lay fast,<br>Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'What though there still need effort, strife?<br>Though much be still unwon?<br>Yet warm it mounts, the hour of life!<br>Death's frozen hour is done!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'The world's great order dawns in sheen,<br>After long darkness rude,<br>Divinelier imaged, clearer seen,<br>With happier zeal pursued.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'With hope extinct and brow composed<br>I mark'd the present die;<br>Its term of life was nearly closed,<br>Yet it had more than I.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'But thou, though to the world's new hour<br>Thou come with aspect marr'd,<br>Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power,<br>Which best befits its bard--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Though more than half thy years be past,<br>And spent thy youthful prime;<br>Though, round thy firmer manhood cast,<br>Hang weeds of our sad time</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Whereof thy youth felt all the spell,<br>And traversed all the shade--<br>Though late, though dimm'd, though weak, yet tell<br>Hope to a world new-made!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Help it to fill that deep desire,<br>The want which rack'd our brain,<br>Consumed our heart with thirst like fire,<br>Immedicable pain;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'Which to the wilderness drove out<br>Our life, to Alpine snow,<br>And palsied all our word with doubt,<br>And all our work with woe--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> 'What still of strength is left, employ<br>That end to help attain:<br>One common wave of thought and joy<br>Lifting mankind again!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> --The vision ended. I awoke<br>As out of sleep, and no<br>Voice moved;--only the torrent broke<br>The silence, far below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Soft darkness on the turf did lie.<br>Solemn, o'er hut and wood,<br>In the yet star-sown nightly sky,<br>The peak of Jaman stood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Still in my soul the voice I heard<br>Of Obermann!--away<br>I turn'd; by some vague impulse stirr'd,<br>Along the rocks of Naye</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Past Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze<br>And the blanch'd summit bare<br>Of Malatrait, to where in haze<br>The Valais opens fair,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And the domed Velan, with his snows,<br>Behind the upcrowding hills,<br>Doth all the heavenly opening close<br>Which the Rhone's murmur fills--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> And glorious there, without a sound,<br>Across the glimmering lake,<br>High in the Valais-depth profound,<br>I saw the morning break.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Matthew+Arnold">Matthew Arnold</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=456507" data-title="Obermann Once More de Matthew Arnold" data-description="Glion?--Ah, twenty years, it cuts
All meaning from a name!
White houses prank where once were huts.
Glion, but not the same!

 And yet I know not! All unchanged
The turf, the pines, the sky!
The hills in their old order ranged;
The lake, with Chil..."></div>
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