The Song of Empedocles
by Matthew Arnold

English poet and critic. His first two volumes of poems The Strayed Reveller and other Poems (1849) and Empedocles on Etna and other Poems (1852) were published anonymously and with little success. He made his mark with his third volume of poetry Poems: A New Edition (1853-54) which contained 'The Scholar Gipsy', 'Sohrab and Rustum', and 'Memorial Verses to Wordsworth'. He reinforced his standing as a poet with New Poems (1867) which included 'Dover Beach' and 'Thyrsis'. He established himself as the leading critic of the age with a number of works including Essays and Criticism (1865, 1888), Culture and Anarchy (1869) and Literature and Dogma (1873).

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The Song of Empedocles
by Matthew Arnold

And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,
As of old, in the fields of heaven,
Your distant, melancholy lines!
Have you, too, survived yourselves?
Are you, too, what I fear to become?
You, too, once lived;
You too moved joyfully
Among august companions,
In an older world, peopled by Gods,
In a mightier order,
The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.
But now, ye kindle
Your lonely, cold-shining lights,
Unwilling lingerers
In the heavenly wilderness,
For a younger, ignoble world;
And renew, by necessity,
Night after night your courses,
In echoing, unneared silence,
Above a race you know not -
Uncaring and undelighted,
Without friend and without home;
Weary like us, though not
Weary with our weariness.

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The Song of Empedocles by Matthew Arnold