Poem by Matthew Arnold

Human Life

What mortal, when he saw,
Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
'I have kept uninfringed my nature's law ;
The inly-written chart thou gavest me,
To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end'?

Ah! let us make no claim,
On life's incognisable sea,
To too exact a steering of our way;
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,
If some fair coast have lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail'd us to keep company.

Ay! we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule.
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

No! as the foaming swath
Of torn-up water, on the main,
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow'd path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;

Even so we leave behind,
As, charter'd by some unknown Powers
We stem across the sea of life by night
The joys which were not for our use design'd;--
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours. 

1. Religious Isolation
2. To George Cruikshank
3. Written in Butler’s Sermons
4. Quiet Work
5. To the Duke of Wellington

Samuel Rogers Human Life ("The lark has sung his carol in the sky")

Print

1945 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version