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. Religious Isolation
2. To George Cruikshank
3. Written in Butler’s Sermons
4. Quiet Work
5. Written in Emerson’s Essays

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

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