The poetical works of Matthew Arnold/Human Life
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 steered by to the end"?
Ah! let us make no claim,
On life's incognizable sea,
To too exact a steering of our way;
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,
If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hailed us to keep company.
Ay! we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule.
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowed 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-furrowed path
Cut by an onward-laboring vessel's prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;
Even so we leave behind,
As, chartered by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night,
The joys which were not for our use designed,—
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.