They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory 140 Which is brighter than the sun. 144 148 152 156 160 They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; The harvest of its memories cannot reap, They look up with their pale and sunken faces, For they mind you of their angels in high places, 'How long,' they say, 'how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart, Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path! But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper From SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. [1847-1850] I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 8 Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; 12 And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, 'Guess now who holds thee?' 'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, 'Not Death, but Love.' IV. Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, And dost thou lift this house's latch too poor 8 In folds of golden fulness at my door? That weeps as thou must sing V. alone, aloof. I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred XIV. If thou must love me, let it be for nought. 4 Of speaking gently, Do not say her way for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day' For these things in themselves, Beloved, may 8 Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, A creature might forget to weep, who bore 12 Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. XLIII. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 4 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 12 With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. THE POETS. [From Aurora Leigh, Bk. I, 11. 833-880 (1856)] Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room Piled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out. 6 Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there 10 The first book first. And how I felt it beat An hour before the sun would let me read! As the earth 15 Plunges in fury, when the internal fires. Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat The marts and temples, the triumphal gates And towers of observation, clears herself To elemental freedom thus, my soul, 20 At poetry's divine first finger-touch, Let go conventions and sprang up surprised, Before two worlds. What's this, Aurora Leigh, You write so of the poets, and not laugh? 25 Those virtuous liars, dreamers after dark, Exaggerators of the sun and moon, And soothsayers in a tea-cup? I write so Of the only truth-tellers now left to God, 80 Opposed to relative, comparative, And temporal truths; the only holders by His sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms; Erect, sublime, the measure of a man, A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. [From 'The Cornhill Magazine', July 1860] What was he doing, the great god He cut it short, did the great god Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, 40 The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, MATTHEW ARNOLD. MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888), born at the village of Laleham, in Middlesex, was the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the well-known headmaster of Rugby School. He was educated at Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford, In 1847 he became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, then in charge of the administration of public instruction, and, through his influence, received an inspectorship of schools in 1851, which he held for 35 years. From 1857-67 he was also Professor of Poetry in the university of Oxford, a post which first set to work his faculty for literary criticism. To study the educational systems of France and Germany, he paid several visits to the Continent, with the result that he became a great admirer and advocator of German education. He died suddenly of heart-disease at Liverpool, while on a visit there, and was buried in his native parish of Laleham. Matthew Arnold holds a place in English literature as a poet as well as a prosewriter. In his poetry, mostly written during the first half of his literary career he is, like his master Wordsworth, at his best in the meditative and descriptive genre, and therefore succeeded both in lyric and in epic verse. In the former we owe to him a number of exquisite lyrics, more or less tinged with a refined melancholy, such as Isolation (1852), Rugby Chapel (1857), A Southern Night (1859), Dover Beach (1867), and the noble elegy of Thyrsis (1867), in which he lamented the death of his college friend, the poet Arthur Clough († 1861). His narrative gift is displayed in the half lyrical romantic tale of Tristram and Iseult (1852), in the Persian story of Sohrab and Rustum (1853), an Oriental variant of the old Hildebrand theme, based on an episode of Firdausi's Shah Nameh (A.D. 1003), and in the Scandinavian myth of Balder Dead (1855). His dramatic poem Empedocles on Etna (1852) is specially noteworthy for the fine songs of Callicles the harp-player. Arnold's academic qualities of classical lucidity, urbanity, and restraint are seen to their best advantage in his prose essays, which range over literary, political, and theological criticism and are models of pure harmonious English. His finest literary criticism is to be found in his lectures On Translating Homer (1861) and On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867) and in his Essays in Criticism (1865-85). In the latter, his most important prose writings, he insisted on the study of the ancients and on the advantages of a literary education as opposed to mere scientific training, and held up as models for his countrymen the French authors rather than the German. The collection of essays called Friendship's Garland (1871) is mainly political, those entitled Culture and Anarchy (1869) and Literature and Dogma (1873) mainly theological. SHAKSPERE. [From The Strayed Reveller and other Poems (1849)] - Others abide our question. Thou art free. |