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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=456515" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused<br> With rain, where thick the crocus blows,<br> Past the dark forges long disused,<br> The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.<br> The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,<br> Through forest, up the mountain-side. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The autumnal evening darkens round,<br> The wind is up, and drives the rain;<br> While, hark! far down, with strangled sound<br> Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,<br> Where that wet smoke, among the woods,<br> Over his boiling cauldron broods. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Swift rush the spectral vapours white<br> Past limestone scars with ragged pines,<br> Showing--then blotting from our sight!--<br> Halt--through the cloud-drift something shines!<br> High in the valley, wet and drear,<br> The huts of Courrerie appear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher<br> Mounts up the stony forest-way.<br> At last the encircling trees retire;<br> Look! through the showery twilight grey<br> What pointed roofs are these advance?--<br> A palace of the Kings of France? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Approach, for what we seek is here!<br> Alight, and sparely sup, and wait<br> For rest in this outbuilding near;<br> Then cross the sward and reach that gate.<br> Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come<br> To the Carthusians' world-famed home. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The silent courts, where night and day<br> Into their stone-carved basins cold<br> The splashing icy fountains play--<br> The humid corridors behold!<br> Where, ghostlike in the deepening night,<br> Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The chapel, where no organ's peal<br> Invests the stern and naked prayer--<br> With penitential cries they kneel<br> And wrestle; rising then, with bare<br> And white uplifted faces stand,<br> Passing the Host from hand to hand; </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Each takes, and then his visage wan<br> Is buried in his cowl once more.<br> The cells!--the suffering Son of Man<br> Upon the wall--the knee-worn floor--<br> And where they sleep, that wooden bed,<br> Which shall their coffin be, when dead! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The library, where tract and tome<br> Not to feed priestly pride are there,<br> To hymn the conquering march of Rome,<br> Nor yet to amuse, as ours are!<br> They paint of souls the inner strife,<br> Their drops of blood, their death in life. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> The garden, overgrown--yet mild,<br> See, fragrant herbs are flowering there!<br> Strong children of the Alpine wild<br> Whose culture is the brethren's care;<br> Of human tasks their only one,<br> And cheerful works beneath the sun. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Those halls, too, destined to contain<br> Each its own pilgrim-host of old,<br> From England, Germany, or Spain--<br> All are before me! I behold<br> The House, the Brotherhood austere!<br> --And what am I, that I am here? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> For rigorous teachers seized my youth,<br> And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,<br> Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,<br> There bade me gaze, and there aspire.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:<br> What dost thou in this living tomb? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Forgive me, masters of the mind!<br> At whose behest I long ago<br> So much unlearnt, so much resign'd--<br> I come not here to be your foe!<br> I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,<br> To curse and to deny your truth; </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Not as their friend, or child, I speak!<br> But as, on some far northern strand,<br> Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek<br> In pity and mournful awe might stand<br> Before some fallen Runic stone--<br> For both were faiths, and both are gone. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Wandering between two worlds, one dead,<br> The other powerless to be born,<br> With nowhere yet to rest my head,<br> Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.<br> Their faith, my tears, the world deride--<br> I come to shed them at their side. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"> Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,<br> Ye solemn seats of holy pain!<br> Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,<br> Till I possess my soul again;<br>Till free my thoughts before me roll,<br>Not chafed by hourly false control! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the world cries your faith is now<br>But a dead time's exploded dream;<br>My melancholy, sciolists say,<br>Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme--<br>As if the world had ever had<br>A faith, or sciolists been sad! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, if it be pass'd, take away,<br>At least, the restlessness, the pain;<br>Be man henceforth no more a prey<br>To these out-dated stings again!<br>The nobleness of grief is gone<br>Ah, leave us not the fret alone! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But--if you cannot give us ease--<br>Last of the race of them who grieve<br>Here leave us to die out with these<br>Last of the people who believe!<br>Silent, while years engrave the brow;<br>Silent--the best are silent now. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Achilles ponders in his tent,<br>The kings of modern thought are dumb,<br>Silent they are though not content,<br>And wait to see the future come.<br>They have the grief men had of yore,<br>But they contend and cry no more. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our fathers water'd with their tears<br>This sea of time whereon we sail,<br>Their voices were in all men's ears<br>We pass'd within their puissant hail.<br>Still the same ocean round us raves,<br>But we stand mute, and watch the waves. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">For what avail'd it, all the noise<br>And outcry of the former men?--<br>Say, have their sons achieved more joys,<br>Say, is life lighter now than then?<br>The sufferers died, they left their pain--<br>The pangs which tortured them remain. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What helps it now, that Byron bore,<br>With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart,<br>Through Europe to the Ætolian shore<br>The pageant of his bleeding heart?<br>That thousands counted every groan,<br>And Europe made his woe her own? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze<br>Carried thy lovely wail away,<br>Musical through Italian trees<br>Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?<br>Inheritors of thy distress<br>Have restless hearts one throb the less? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or are we easier, to have read,<br>O Obermann! the sad, stern page,<br>Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head<br>From the fierce tempest of thine age<br>In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,<br>Or chalets near the Alpine snow? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ye slumber in your silent grave!--<br>The world, which for an idle day<br>Grace to your mood of sadness gave,<br>Long since hath flung her weeds away.<br>The eternal trifler breaks your spell;<br>But we--we learned your lore too well! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,<br>More fortunate, alas! than we,<br>Which without hardness will be sage,<br>And gay without frivolity.<br>Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;<br>But, while we wait, allow our tears! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Allow them! We admire with awe<br>The exulting thunder of your race;<br>You give the universe your law,<br>You triumph over time and space!<br>Your pride of life, your tireless powers,<br>We laud them, but they are not ours. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">We are like children rear'd in shade<br>Beneath some old-world abbey wall,<br>Forgotten in a forest-glade,<br>And secret from the eyes of all.<br>Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves,<br>Their abbey, and its close of graves! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, where the road runs near the stream,<br>Oft through the trees they catch a glance<br>Of passing troops in the sun's beam--<br>Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!<br>Forth to the world those soldiers fare,<br>To life, to cities, and to war! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And through the wood, another way,<br>Faint bugle-notes from far are borne,<br>Where hunters gather, staghounds bay,<br>Round some fair forest-lodge at morn.<br>Gay dames are there, in sylvan green;<br>Laughter and cries--those notes between! <br>The banners flashing through the trees</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Make their blood dance and chain their eyes;<br>That bugle-music on the breeze<br>Arrests them with a charm'd surprise.<br>Banner by turns and bugle woo:<br>Ye shy recluses, follow too! <br>O children, what do ye reply?--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Action and pleasure, will ye roam<br>Through these secluded dells to cry<br>And call us?--but too late ye come!<br>Too late for us your call ye blow,<br>Whose bent was taken long ago. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Long since we pace this shadow'd nave;<br>We watch those yellow tapers shine,<br>Emblems of hope over the grave,<br>In the high altar's depth divine;<br>The organ carries to our ear<br>Its accents of another sphere. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Fenced early in this cloistral round<br>Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,<br>How should we grow in other ground?<br>How can we flower in foreign air?<br>--Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease;<br>And leave our desert to its peace!'</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=456515" data-title="Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse de Matthew Arnold" data-description="Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
 With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
 Past the dark forges long disused,
 The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
 The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
 Through forest, up the mountain-side. 

 The aut..."></div>
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