Poem by Matthew Arnold

Absence

IN THIS fair stranger’s eyes of grey
Thine eyes, my love, I see.
I shudder: for the passing day
Had borne me far from thee.

This is the curse of life: that not
A nobler calmer train
Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot
Our passions from our brain;

But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok’d souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will.

I struggle towards the light; and ye,
Once-long’d-for storms of love!
If with the light ye cannot be,
I bear that ye remove.

I struggle towards the light; but oh,
While yet the night is chill,
Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow,
Stay with me, Marguerite, still! 

1. A Modern Sappho
2. To George Cruikshank
3. Stanzas Composed at Carnac
4. Written in Butler’s Sermons
5. To the Duke of Wellington

Capel Lofft Absence ("I love: and day by day, as absent, pine")

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