Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/211

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SONNETS.
173

WEST LONDON.

Crouched on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square,
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.


Some laboring-men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Passed opposite; she touched her girl, who hied
Across, and begged, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.


Thought I, "Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.


She turns from that cold succor, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours."




EAST AND WEST.

In the bare midst of Anglesey they show
Two springs which close by one another play;
And, "Thirteen hundred years agone," they say,
"Two saints met often where those waters flow.


One came from Penmon westward, and a glow
Whitened his face from the sun's fronting ray;
Eastward the other, from the dying day,
And he with unsunned face did always go."


Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark! men said.
The seer from the East was then in light,
The seer from the West was then in shade.