{
 "id": "matthew-arnold/stanzas-from-the-grande-chartreuse",
 "title": "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Matthew Arnold",
 "poet_slug": "matthew-arnold",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Poems",
 "book_slug": "new-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1867,
  "venue": "New Poems (1867)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newpoems00arno"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/matthew-arnold_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27739",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksofm00arn",
   "https://archive.org/details/inmemoriamawrea00marsgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12",
  "corrections": [
   {
    "line": 54,
    "field": "indent",
    "was": 0,
    "now": 2,
    "why": "Indentation absent from the source markup and measured from the scan: this line starts 7.3 character advances (~3.6 em) right of its own page's base margin, where the verse sets flush. Converted at 3.0 advances per indent level (tools/defects.py indent).",
    "checked_against": "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmatthewar00arnouoft",
    "date": "2026-08-20"
   }
  ]
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 210,
  "n_stanzas": 35,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
  "max_indent": 2
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With rain, where thick the crocus blows,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Past the dark forges long disused,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bridge is cross’d, and slow we ride,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through forest, up the mountain-side.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The autumnal evening darkens round,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wind is up, and drives the rain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While, hark! far down, with strangled sound",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Doth the Dead Guiers’ stream complain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where that wet smoke, among the woods,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Over his boiling cauldron broods.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Swift rush the spectral vapours white",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Past limestone scars with ragged pines,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Showing⁠—then blotting from our sight.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Halt! through the cloud-drift something shines!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "High in the valley, wet and drear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The huts of Courrerie appear.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mounts up the stony forest-way.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last the encircling trees retire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Look! through the showery twilight grey",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What pointed roofs are these advance?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A palace of the Kings of France?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Approach, for what we seek is here.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Alight and sparely sup and wait",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For rest in this outbuilding near;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then cross the sward and reach that gate;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the Carthusians’ world-famed home.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The silent courts, where night and day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Into their stone-carved basins cold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The splashing icy fountains play,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The humid corridors behold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where ghostlike in the deepening night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cowl’d forms brush by in gleaming white.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The chapel, where no organ’s peal",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Invests the stern and naked prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With penitential cries they kneel",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wrestle; rising then, with bare",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And white uplifted faces stand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Passing the Host from hand to hand;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Each takes; and then his visage wan",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is buried in his cowl once more.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cells⁠—the suffering Son of Man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the wall! the knee-worn floor!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, where they sleep, that wooden bed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which shall their coffin be, when dead.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The library, where tract and tome",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not to feed priestly pride are there,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To hymn the conquering march of Rome,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor yet to amuse, as ours are;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They paint of souls the inner strife,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their drops of blood, their death in life.",
    "indent": 2
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The garden, overgrown⁠—yet mild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those fragrant herbs are flowering there!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Strong children of the Alpine wild",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose culture is the brethren’s care;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of human tasks their only one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cheerful works beneath the sun.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Those halls too, destined to contain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each its own pilgrim host of old,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From England, Germany, or Spain⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All are before me! I behold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The House, the Brotherhood austere!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—And what am I, that I am here?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For rigorous teachers seized my youth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Show’d me the high white star of Truth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There bade me gaze, and there aspire;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What dost thou in this living tomb?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Forgive me, masters of the mind!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At whose behest I long ago",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So much unlearnt, so much resign’d!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I come not here to be your foe.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To curse and to deny your truth;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Not as their friend or child I speak!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But as on some far northern strand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In pity and mournful awe might stand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Before some fallen Runic stone⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For both were faiths, and both are gone.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Wandering between two worlds, one dead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The other powerless to be born,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With nowhere yet to rest my head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their faith, my tears, the world deride;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I come to shed them at their side.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ye solemn seats of holy pain!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Take me, cowl’d forms, and fence me round,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till I possess my soul again!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till free my thoughts before me roll,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not chafed by hourly false control.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For the world cries your faith is now",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But a dead time’s exploded dream;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My melancholy, sciolists say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is a pass’d mode, an outworn theme⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if the world had ever had",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A faith, or sciolists been sad.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ah, if it be pass’d, take away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At least, the restlessness⁠—the pain!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be man henceforth no more a prey",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To these out-dated stings again!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The nobleness of grief is gone⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ah, leave us not the fret alone!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But, if you cannot give us ease,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Last of the race of them who grieve",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Here leave us to die out with these",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Last of the people who believe!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent, while years engrave the brow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent⁠—the best are silent now.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Achilles ponders in his tent,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The kings of modern thought are dumb;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent they are, though not content,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wait to see the future come.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They have the grief men had of yore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But they contend and cry no more.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Our fathers water’d with their tears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This sea of time whereon we sail;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their voices were in all men’s ears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who pass’d within their puissant hail.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still the same Ocean round us raves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But we stand mute and watch the waves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For what avail’d it, all the noise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And outcry of the former men?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Say, have their sons obtain’d more joys,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Say, is life lighter now than then?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The sufferers died, they left their pain;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pangs which tortured them remain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What helps it now, that Byron bore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With haughty scorn which mock’d the smart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through Europe to the Aetolian shore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pageant of his bleeding heart?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That thousands counted every groan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Europe made his woe her own?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Carried thy lovely wail away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Musical through Italian trees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Inheritors of thy distress",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have restless hearts one throb the less?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Or are we easier, to have read,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O Obermann! the sad, stern page,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which tells us how thou hidd’st thy head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the fierce tempest of thine age",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or chalets near the Alpine snow?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Ye slumber in your silent grave!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The world, which for an idle day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grace to your mood of sadness gave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Long since hath flung her weeds away.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The eternal trifler breaks your spell;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But we⁠—we learnt your lore too well!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There may, perhaps, yet dawn an age,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More fortunate, alas! than we,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which without hardness will be sage,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And gay without frivolity.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, till they rise, allow our tears!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Allow them! We admire with awe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The exulting thunder of your race;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You give the universe your law,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You triumph over time and space.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your pride of life, your tireless powers,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We laud them, but they are not ours.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "We are like children rear’d in shade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beneath some old-world abbey wall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forgotten in a forest-glade",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And secret from the eyes of all;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their abbey, and its close of graves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But where the road runs near the stream,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oft through the trees they catch a glance",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of passing troops in the sun’s beam⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forth to the world those soldiers fare,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To life, to cities, and to war.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And through the wood, another way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faint bugle-notes from far are borne,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where hunters gather, staghounds bay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Round some fair forest-lodge at morn;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gay dames are there in sylvan green,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Laughter and cries⁠—those notes between!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The banners flashing through the trees",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make their blood dance and chain their eyes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That bugle-music on the breeze",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Arrests them with a charm’d surprise.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Banner by turns and bugle woo:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ye shy recluses, follow too!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O children, what do ye reply?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Action and pleasure, will ye roam",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through these secluded dells to cry",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And call us? but too late ye come!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Too late for us your call ye blow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose bent was taken long ago.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Long since we pace this shadow’d nave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We watch those yellow tapers shine,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Emblems of hope over the grave,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the high altar’s depth divine;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The organ carries to our ear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its accents of another sphere.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“Fenced early in this cloistral round",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of reverie, of shade, of prayer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How should we grow in other ground?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How can we flower in foreign air?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And leave our desert to its peace!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}