He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said.
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v02 - Aqu to Bag
But then this evil is so
much compensated by the propagation, on a large scale, of the
mental aptitudes and demands which an open mind and a flexible
intelligence naturally engender, genius itself in the long run so
greatly finds its account in this propagation, and bodies like the
French Academy have such power for promoting it, that the
general advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole,
rather furthered than impeded by their existence.
How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! how
much better, in general, do the productions of its spirit show in
the qualities of genius than in the qualities of intelligence! One
may constantly remark this in the work of individuals: how much
more striking, in general, does any Englishman-of some vigor
of mind, but by no means a poet-seem in his verse than in his
prose! His verse partly suffers from his not being really a poet,
partly no doubt from the very same defects which impair his
prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough success in it,
but how much more powerful a personage does he appear in it,
by dint of feeling and of originality and movement of ideas, than
when he is writing prose! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is
just the reverse: set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial,
## p. 858 (#280) ############################################
858
MATTHEW ARNOLD
and impotent; set him to write prose, he is free, natural, and
effective. The power of French literature is in its prose writers,
the power of English literature is in its poets. Nay, many of
the celebrated French poets depend wholly for their fame upon
the qualities of intelligence which they exhibit,- qualities which
are the distinctive support of prose; many of the celebrated
English prose writers depend wholly for their fame upon the
qualities of genius and imagination which they exhibit,- qualities
which are the distinctive support of poetry.
But as I have said, the qualities of genius are less transferable
than the qualities of intelligence; less can be immediately learned
and appropriated from their product; they are less direct and
stringent intellectual agencies, though they may be more beau-
tiful and divine. Shakespeare and our great Elizabethan group
were certainly more gifted writers than Corneille and his group;
but what was the sequel to this great literature, this literature of
genius, as we may call it, stretching from Marlowe to Milton?
What did it lead up to in English literature? To our provincial
and second-rate literature of the eighteenth century. What, on
the other hand, was the sequel to the literature of the French
"great century," to this literature of intelligence, as by compar-
ison with our Elizabethan literature we may call it; what did it
lead up to? To the French literature of the eighteenth century,
one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual agencies that
have ever existed, the greatest European force of the eighteenth
century. In science, again, we had Newton, a genius of the
very highest order, a type of genius in science if ever there was
one. On the continent, as a sort of counterpart to Newton,
there was Leibnitz; a man, it seems to me (though on these
matters I speak under correction), of much less creative energy
of genius, much less power of divination than Newton, but rather
a man of admirable intelligence, a type of intelligence in science
if ever there was one. Well, and what did they each directly
lead up to in science? What was the intellectual generation that
sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of
science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was
continued by the English analysts of the eighteenth century,
comparatively powerless and obscure followers of the renowned
master. The man of intelligence was continued by successors
like Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, the greatest names
in modern mathematics.
-
## p. 859 (#281) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
859
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
From 'Culture and Anarchy'
HE disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; some-
make its motive mere exclusiveness and
vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on
a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten
by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of
sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and
class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from
other people who have not got it. No serious man would call
this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. To
find the real ground for the very differing estimate which serious
people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for cult-
ure in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a
motive the word curiosity gives us.
ment was.
I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the
foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense.
With us the word is always used in a somewhat disapproving
sense. A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of
the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curi-
osity; but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of
frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some
little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic,
M. Sainte-Beuve; and a very inadequate estimate it in my judg-
And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in
our English way it left out of sight the double sense really in-
volved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp
M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled
in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to
perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people
with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not
blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted
worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity
about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease,
so there is certainly a curiosity—a desire after the things of the
mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing
them as they are-which is, in an intelligent being, natural
and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they
are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often
## p. 860 (#282) ############################################
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of
the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean
to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says:-"The
first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to
augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelli-
gent being yet more intelligent. " This is the true ground to
assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and
for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion; and it is a
worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to
describe it.
But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the
scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are,
natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground
of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the
impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for
removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminish-
ing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better
and happier than we found it,-motives eminently such as are
called social,-come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the
main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described
not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in
the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by
the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for
pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for
doing good. As in the first view of it we took for its worthy
motto Montesquieu's words, "To render an intelligent being yet
more intelligent! " so in the second view of it there is no better
motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: "To
make reason and the will of God prevail. "
Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over-
hasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, be-
cause its turn is for acting rather than thinking, and it wants to
be beginning to act; and whereas it is apt to take its own con-
ceptions, which proceed from its own state of development and
share in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a
basis of action: what distinguishes culture is, that it is possessed
by the scientific passion as well as by the passion of doing good;
that it demands worthy notions of reason and the will of God,
and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substi-
tute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or insti-
tution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason
.
## p. 861 (#283) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
861
and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting,
even with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery
ever before its thoughts, but that it can remember that acting
and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what
we ought to act and to institute.
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness
and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to
make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for
machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion.
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture
has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It
has one even yet greater! -the passion for making them prevail.
It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows
that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until
the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with
sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we
must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk
from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweet-
ness and light for as many as possible. Again and again I
have insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity,
how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those
are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative
power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and
thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest measure
permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive.
Only it must be real thought and real beauty; real sweetness
and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as
they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the
way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses.
The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of
working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrin-
ate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting
the creed of their own profession or party. Our religious and
political organizations give an example of this way of working on
the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differ-
ently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior
classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its
own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to
do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought
and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men
live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may
## p. 862 (#284) ############################################
862
MATTHEW ARNOLD
use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely,- nourished and not
bound by them.
This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true
apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who
have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying
from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best
ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all
that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive;
to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cul-
tivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and
thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness
and light. Such a man was Abélard in the Middle Ages, in spite
of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless emotion and
enthusiasm which Abélard excited. Such were Lessing and
Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their
services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Gen-
erations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and
works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder
will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of these two
men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as
the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And
why? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broad-
ened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked
powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the
will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said:- "Let us
not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as
thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of
light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their
firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the divis
ion of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times;
for the old order is passed, and the new arises; the night is
spent, the day is come forth; and thou shalt crown the year with
thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest
sown by other hands than theirs; when thou shalt send forth new
laborers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet. "
Keeping this in view, I have in my own mind often indulged
myself with the fancy of employing, in order to designate our
aristocratic class, the name of The Barbarians. The Barbarians,
to whom we all owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed
our worn-out Europe, had, as is well known, eminent merits;
and in this country, where we are for the most part sprung from
## p. 863 (#285) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
863
the Barbarians, we have never had the prejudice against them.
which prevails among the races of Latin origin. The Barbarians
brought with them that stanch individualism, as the modern
phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for the asser-
tion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central
idea of English life, and of which we have at any rate a very
rich supply. The stronghold and natural seat of this passion
was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the inherit-
ors; and this class, accordingly, have signally manifested it, and
have done much by their example to recommend it to the body
of the nation, who already, indeed, had it in their blood. The
Barbarians, again, had the passion for field-sports; and they have
handed it on to our aristocratic class, who of this passion, too,
as of the passion for asserting one's personal liberty, are the
great natural stronghold. The care of the Barbarians for the
body, and for all manly exercises; the vigor, good looks, and
fine complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their
families by these means,- all this may be observed still in our
aristocratic class. The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its char-
acteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bear-
ing,-what is this but the attractive commencement of the
politeness of our aristocratic class? In some Barbarian noble,
no doubt, one would have admired, if one could have been then
alive to see it, the rudiments of our politest peer. Only, all this
culture (to call it by that name) of the Barbarians was an exte-
rior culture mainly. It consisted principally in outward gifts and
graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess. The chief
inward gifts which had part in it were the most exterior, so to
speak, of inward gifts, those which come nearest to outward ones;
they were courage, a high spirit, self-confidence. Far within,
and unawakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought and
feeling, to which these interesting productions of nature had,
from the circumstances of their life, no access. Making allow-
ances for the difference of the times, surely we can observe
precisely the same thing now in our aristocratic class. In general
its culture is exterior chiefly; all the exterior graces and accom-
plishments, and the more external of the inward virtues, seem
to be principally its portion. It now, of course, cannot but be
often in contact with those studies by which, from the world of
thought and feeling, true culture teaches us to fetch sweetness
and light; but its hold upon these very studies appears remarkably
-
## p. 864 (#286) ############################################
864
MATTHEW ARNOLD
external, and unable to exert any deep power upon its spirit.
Therefore the one insufficiency which we noted in the perfect
mean of this class was an insufficiency of light.
And owing
to the same causes, does not a subtle criticism lead us to make,
even on the good looks and politeness of our aristocratic class,
and of even the most fascinating half of that class, the fem-
inine half, the one qualifying remark, that in these charming
gifts there should perhaps be, for ideal perfection, a shade more
soul?
I often, therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the
aristocratic class from the Philistines proper, or middle class,
name the former, in my own mind, The Barbarians. And when
I go through the country, and see this and that beautiful and
imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape, "There," I say
to myself, "is a great fortified post of the Barbarians. "
OXFORD
From Essays in Criticism'
N°
WE are all seekers still! seekers often make mistakes, and
I wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and not
to touch Oxford. Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely,
so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so
serene!
"There are our young barbarians all at play! "
And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gar-
dens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last
enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by
her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal
of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, to beauty, in a word,
which is only truth seen from another side? — nearer, perhaps,
than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose
heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally,
given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the
Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpop-
ular names, and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so
inspire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher
could ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all
prone, that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on
-
## p. 865 (#287) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
865
the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise (and
nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of
sight behind him: the bondage of "was uns alle bandigt, Das
Gemeine! " She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly
drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son; for
she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after all, hers.
Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the Phi-
listines, compared with the warfare which this queen of romance
has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after
we are gone?
TO A FRIEND
WHO
но prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind? -
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him. But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
YOUTH AND CALM
'TIS
Is death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
II-55
## p. 866 (#288) ############################################
866
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath-
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.
WE
ISOLATION
TO MARGUERITE
E WERE apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learned-
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturned.
Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell-
Thou lov'st no more;-Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! -and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign-
Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
How vain a thing is mortal love,
## p. 867 (#289) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
867
Wandering in Heaven, far removed;
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth-to prove, and make thine own:
"Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone. "
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things-
Ocean and clouds and night and day;
Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
And life, and others' joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.
Of happier men- for they, at least,
Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollow lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour—
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh, might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire? -
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea
## p. 868 (#290) ############################################
868
MATTHEW ARNOLD
STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF OBERMANN' (1849)
IN
IN FRONT the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack,
Close o'er it. in the air.
Behind are the abandoned baths
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley-paths,
The mists are on the Rhone —
The white mists rolling like a sea!
I hear the torrents roar.
- Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee;
I feel thee near once more.
I turn thy leaves! I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o'er thy soul.
Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe'er thou art,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain-air
Fresh through these pages blows;
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows;
Though here a mountain-murmur swells
Of many a dark-boughed pine;
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine-
Yet, through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain-bee,
There sobs I know not what ground-tone
Of human agony.
Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
## p. 869 (#291) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
869
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?
And then we turn, thou sadder sage,
To thee! we feel thy spell!
-
- The hopeless tangle of our age,
Thou too hast scanned it well!
Immovable thou sittest, still
As death, composed to bear!
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,
And icy thy despair.
He who hath watched, not shared, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone.
He only lives with the world's life
Who hath renounced his own.
To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled
Where thou, O seer! art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold-
The world is colder yet!
And thou hast pleasures, too, to share
With those who come to thee-
Balms floating on thy mountain-air,
And healing sights to see.
-
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet-door, and seen
The summer-day grow late;
And darkness steal o'er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starr'd,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward,
Lake Leman's waters, far below!
And watched the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow;
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue
Through the pine branches play —
## p. 870 (#292) ############################################
870
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Listened and felt thyself grow young!
Listened, and wept-Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad guide, adieu!
I go, fate drives me; but I leave
Half of my life with you.
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
I in the world must live; - but thou,
Thou melancholy shade!
Wilt not, if thou can'st see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The Children of the Second Birth,
Whom the world could not tame.
Farewell! Whether thou now liest near
That much-loved inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie;
And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,
Between the dusty vineyard-walls
Issuing on that green place,
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger's face,
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;
Or whether, by maligner fate,
Among the swarms of men,
Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
## p. 871 (#293) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
871
The Capital of Pleasures sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave;-
-
Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!
MEMORIAL VERSES (1850)
OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
G Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe's death was told, we said,
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
-
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said. The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
## p. 872 (#294) ############################################
872
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And Wordsworth! -Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us--and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth,
On the cool, flowery lap of earth.
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
## p. 873 (#295) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
873
THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA
O
HUSSEIN
MOST just Vizier, send away
The cloth-merchants, and let them be,
Them and their dues, this day! the King
Is ill at ease, and calls for thee.
THE VIZIER
O merchants, tarry yet a day
Here in Bokhara! but at noon,
To-morrow, come, and ye shall pay
Each fortieth web of cloth to me,
As the law is, and go your way.
O Hussein, lead me to the King!
Thou teller of sweet tales,- thine own,
Ferdousi's, and the others',- lead!
How is it with my lord?
HUSSEIN
Alone,
Ever since prayer-time, he doth wait,
O Vizier! without lying down,
In the great window of the gate,
Looking into the Registàn,
Where through the sellers' booths the slaves
Are this way bringing the dead man. —
O Vizier, here is the King's door!
THE KING
O Vizier, I may bury him?
THE VIZIER
O King, thou know'st, I have been sick
These many days, and heard no thing
(For Allah shut my ears and mind),
Not even what thou dost, O King!
Wherefore, that I may counsel thee,
Let Hussein, if thou wilt, make haste
To speak in order what hath chanced.
## p. 874 (#296) ############################################
874
MATTHEW ARNOLD
THE KING
O izier, be it as thou say'st!
HUSSEIN
Three days since, at the time of prayer,
A certain Moollah, with his robe
All rent, and dust upon his hair,
Watched my lord's coming forth, and pushed
The golden mace-bearers aside,
And fell at the King's feet, and cried:-
"Justice, O King, and on myself!
On this great sinner, who did break
The law, and by the law must die!
Vengeance, O King! "
—
But the King spake :-
"What fool is this, that hurts our ears
With folly? or what drunken slave?
My guards, what, prick him with your spears!
Prick me the fellow from the path! "
As the King said, so was it done,
And to the mosque my lord passed on.
--
But on the morrow when the King
Went forth again, the holy book
Carried before him, as his right,
And through the square his way he took,
My man comes running, flecked with blood
From yesterday, and falling down
Cries out most earnestly:-"O King,
My lord, O King, do right, I pray!
"How canst thou, ere thou hear, discern
If I speak folly? but a king,
Whether a thing be great or small,
Like Allah, hears and judges all.
"Wherefore hear thou! Thou know'st how fierce
In these last days the sun hath burned;
That the green water in the tanks
Is to a putrid puddle turned;
And the canal, that from the stream
Of Samarcand is brought this way,
Wastes, and runs thinner every day.
## p. 875 (#297) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
875
"Now I at nightfall had gone forth
Alone, and in a darksome place
Under some mulberry trees I found
A little pool; and in short space
With all the water that was there
I filled my pitcher, and stole home
Unseen; and having drink to spare,
I hid the can behind the door,
And went up on the roof to sleep.
"But in the night, which was with wind
And burning dust, again I creep
Down, having fever, for a drink.
"Now meanwhile had my brethren found
The water-pitcher, where it stood
Behind the door upon the ground,
And called my mother; and they all,
As they were thirsty, and the night
Most sultry, drained the pitcher there;
That they sate with it, in my sight,
Their lips still wet, when I came down.
"Now mark! I, being fevered, sick
(Most unblest also), at that sight
Brake forth, and cursed them-dost thou hear? —
One was my mother- Now, do right! "
But my lord mused a space, and said:-
:-
"Send him away, sirs, and make on!
It is some madman! ” the King said.
As the King bade, so was it done.
The morrow, at the self-same hour,
In the King's path, behold, the man,
Not kneeling, sternly fixed! he stood
Right opposite, and thus began,
Frowning grim down:-"Thou wicked King,
Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear!
What, must I howl in the next world,
Because thou wilt not listen here?
"What, wilt thou pray, and get thee grace,
And all grace shall to me be grudged?
Nay, but I swear, from this thy path
I will not stir till I be judged! "
## p. 876 (#298) ############################################
876
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Then they who stood about the King
Drew close together and conferred;
Till that the King stood forth and said,
"Before the priests thou shalt be heard. "
But when the Ulemas were met,
And the thing heard, they doubted not;
But sentenced him, as the law is,
To die by stoning on the spot.
Now the King charged us secretly:-
"Stoned must he be, the law stands so.
Yet, if he seek to fly, give way;
Hinder him not, but let him go. "
So saying, the King took a stone,
And cast it softly;- but the man,
With a great joy upon his face,
Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.
-
So they, whose lot it was, cast stones,
That they flew thick and bruised him sore,
But he praised Allah with loud voice,
And remained kneeling as before.
My lord had covered up his face;
But when one told him, "He is dead,"
Turning him quickly to go in,-
་་ Bring thou to me his corpse," he said.
-
THE VIZIER
And truly while I speak, O King,
I hear the bearers on the stair;
Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?
-Ho! enter ye who tarry there!
O King, in this I praise thee not.
Now must I call thy grief not wise,
Is he thy friend, or of thy blood,
To find such favor in thine eyes?
Nay, were he thine own mother's son,
Still, thou art king, and the law stands.
It were not meet the balance swerved,
The sword were broken in thy hands.
But being nothing, as he is,
Why for no cause make sad thy face? —
## p. 877 (#299) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
877
Lo, I am old! Three kings, ere thee,
Have I seen reigning in this place.
But who, through all this length of time,
Could bear the burden of his years,
If he for strangers pained his heart
Not less than those who merit tears?
Fathers we must have, wife and child,
And grievous is the grief for these;
This pain alone, which must be borne,
Makes the head white, and bows the knees.
But other loads than this his own
One man is not well made to bear.
Besides, to each are his own friends,
To mourn with him, and show him care.
Look, this is but one single place,
Though it be great; all the earth round,
If a man bear to have it so,
Things which might vex him shall be found.
All these have sorrow, and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer, and sing,
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No, nor on this dead dog, O King!
THE KING
O Vizier, thou art old, I young!
Clear in these things I cannot see.
My head is burning, and a heat
Is in my skin which angers me.
But hear ye this, ye sons of men!
They that bear rule, and are obeyed,
Unto a rule more strong than theirs
Are in their turn obedient made.
In vain therefore, with wistful eyes
Gazing up hither, the poor man
Who loiters by the high-heaped booths,
Below there in the Registàn,
Says: "Happy he, who lodges there!
With silken raiment, store of rice,
## p. 878 (#300) ############################################
878
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And for this drought, all kinds of fruits,
Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,
With cherries served in drifts of snow. "
In vain hath a king power to build
Houses, arcades, enameled mosques;
And to make orchard-closes, filled
With curious fruit-trees brought from far;
With cisterns for the winter rain;
And in the desert, spacious inns
In divers places-if that pain
Is not more lightened, which he feels,
If his will be not satisfied;
And that it be not, from all time
The law is planted, to abide.
Thou wast a sinner, thou poor man!
Thou wast athirst, and didst not see
That, though we take what we desire,
We must not snatch it eagerly.
And I have meat and drink at will,
And rooms of treasures, not a few,
But I am sick, nor heed I these;
And what I would, I cannot do.
Even the great honor which I have,
When I am dead, will soon grow still;
So have I neither joy nor fame-
But what I can do, that I will.
I have a fretted brickwork tomb
Upon a hill on the right hand,
Hard by a close of apricots,
Upon the road of Samarcand;
Thither, O Vizier, will I bear
This man my pity could not save,
And plucking up the marble flags,
There lay his body in my grave.
Bring water, nard, and linen rolls!
Wash off all blood, set smooth each limb!
Then say: "He was not wholly vile,
Because a king shall bury him. "
## p. 879 (#301) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
879
THE
DOVER BEACH
HE sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Egean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
## p. 880 (#302) ############################################
880
MATTHEW ARNOLD
WEARY
SELF-DEPENDENCE
EARY of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you. "
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:-
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see. "
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
:-
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery! "
## p. 881 (#303) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
881
I
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
H, HIDE me in your gloom profound,
Ο" Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!
For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a passed mood, and outworn theme —
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!
Ah, if it be passed, take away
At least the restlessness, the pain!
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone-
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!
But if you cannot give us ease
Last of the race of them who grieve,
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent the best are silent now.
―
Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb;
Silent they are, though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.
Our fathers watered with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail;
Their voices were in all men's ears
Who passed within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute and watch the waves.
II-56
## p. 882 (#304) ############################################
882
MATTHEW ARNOLD
For what availed it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men? -
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then?
The sufferers died, they left their pain-
The pangs which tortured them remain.
What helps it now that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mocked the smart,
Through Europe to the Etolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?
What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?
Inheritors of thy distress,
Have restless hearts one throb the less?
Or are we easier to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or châlets near the Alpine snow?
Ye slumber in your silent grave!
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we -we learnt your lore too well!
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But while we wait, allow our tears!
## p. 883 (#305) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
883
A SUMMER NIGHT
IN
IN THE deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world, but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon's rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!
And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene:
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long wide sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair-
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.
And the calm moonlight seems to say:-
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,
--
Never by passion quite possessed
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway? —
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield, and be
Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
## p. 884 (#306) ############################################
884
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.
And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
Listeth will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity:
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.
Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
Clearness divine!
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;
Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,
And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil!
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain
But I will rather say that you remain
## p. 885 (#307) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
885
A world above man's head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free;
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still!
THE BETTER PART
L
ONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!
"Christ," some one says, "was human as we are;
No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;
We live no more when we have done our span. "—
"Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?
Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! »
So answerest thou; but why not rather say,
"Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see? —
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? -Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he! "
THE LAST WORD
REEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
C
Let the long contention cease!
much compensated by the propagation, on a large scale, of the
mental aptitudes and demands which an open mind and a flexible
intelligence naturally engender, genius itself in the long run so
greatly finds its account in this propagation, and bodies like the
French Academy have such power for promoting it, that the
general advance of the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole,
rather furthered than impeded by their existence.
How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose! how
much better, in general, do the productions of its spirit show in
the qualities of genius than in the qualities of intelligence! One
may constantly remark this in the work of individuals: how much
more striking, in general, does any Englishman-of some vigor
of mind, but by no means a poet-seem in his verse than in his
prose! His verse partly suffers from his not being really a poet,
partly no doubt from the very same defects which impair his
prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough success in it,
but how much more powerful a personage does he appear in it,
by dint of feeling and of originality and movement of ideas, than
when he is writing prose! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is
just the reverse: set him to write poetry, he is limited, artificial,
## p. 858 (#280) ############################################
858
MATTHEW ARNOLD
and impotent; set him to write prose, he is free, natural, and
effective. The power of French literature is in its prose writers,
the power of English literature is in its poets. Nay, many of
the celebrated French poets depend wholly for their fame upon
the qualities of intelligence which they exhibit,- qualities which
are the distinctive support of prose; many of the celebrated
English prose writers depend wholly for their fame upon the
qualities of genius and imagination which they exhibit,- qualities
which are the distinctive support of poetry.
But as I have said, the qualities of genius are less transferable
than the qualities of intelligence; less can be immediately learned
and appropriated from their product; they are less direct and
stringent intellectual agencies, though they may be more beau-
tiful and divine. Shakespeare and our great Elizabethan group
were certainly more gifted writers than Corneille and his group;
but what was the sequel to this great literature, this literature of
genius, as we may call it, stretching from Marlowe to Milton?
What did it lead up to in English literature? To our provincial
and second-rate literature of the eighteenth century. What, on
the other hand, was the sequel to the literature of the French
"great century," to this literature of intelligence, as by compar-
ison with our Elizabethan literature we may call it; what did it
lead up to? To the French literature of the eighteenth century,
one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual agencies that
have ever existed, the greatest European force of the eighteenth
century. In science, again, we had Newton, a genius of the
very highest order, a type of genius in science if ever there was
one. On the continent, as a sort of counterpart to Newton,
there was Leibnitz; a man, it seems to me (though on these
matters I speak under correction), of much less creative energy
of genius, much less power of divination than Newton, but rather
a man of admirable intelligence, a type of intelligence in science
if ever there was one. Well, and what did they each directly
lead up to in science? What was the intellectual generation that
sprang from each of them? I only repeat what the men of
science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius was
continued by the English analysts of the eighteenth century,
comparatively powerless and obscure followers of the renowned
master. The man of intelligence was continued by successors
like Bernoulli, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace, the greatest names
in modern mathematics.
-
## p. 859 (#281) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
859
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
From 'Culture and Anarchy'
HE disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity; some-
make its motive mere exclusiveness and
vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on
a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten
by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of
sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and
class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from
other people who have not got it. No serious man would call
this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. To
find the real ground for the very differing estimate which serious
people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for cult-
ure in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity; and such a
motive the word curiosity gives us.
ment was.
I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the
foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense.
With us the word is always used in a somewhat disapproving
sense. A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of
the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curi-
osity; but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of
frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some
little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic,
M. Sainte-Beuve; and a very inadequate estimate it in my judg-
And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in
our English way it left out of sight the double sense really in-
volved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp
M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled
in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to
perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people
with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not
blameworthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted
worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity
about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease,
so there is certainly a curiosity—a desire after the things of the
mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing
them as they are-which is, in an intelligent being, natural
and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they
are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often
## p. 860 (#282) ############################################
860
MATTHEW ARNOLD
attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of
the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean
to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says:-"The
first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to
augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelli-
gent being yet more intelligent. " This is the true ground to
assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and
for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion; and it is a
worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to
describe it.
But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the
scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are,
natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground
of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the
impulses toward action, help, and beneficence, the desire for
removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminish-
ing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better
and happier than we found it,-motives eminently such as are
called social,-come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the
main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described
not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in
the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by
the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for
pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for
doing good. As in the first view of it we took for its worthy
motto Montesquieu's words, "To render an intelligent being yet
more intelligent! " so in the second view of it there is no better
motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: "To
make reason and the will of God prevail. "
Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over-
hasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, be-
cause its turn is for acting rather than thinking, and it wants to
be beginning to act; and whereas it is apt to take its own con-
ceptions, which proceed from its own state of development and
share in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a
basis of action: what distinguishes culture is, that it is possessed
by the scientific passion as well as by the passion of doing good;
that it demands worthy notions of reason and the will of God,
and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substi-
tute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or insti-
tution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason
.
## p. 861 (#283) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
861
and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and instituting,
even with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery
ever before its thoughts, but that it can remember that acting
and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what
we ought to act and to institute.
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness
and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to
make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for
machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion.
Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture
has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It
has one even yet greater! -the passion for making them prevail.
It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows
that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until
the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with
sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we
must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk
from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweet-
ness and light for as many as possible. Again and again I
have insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity,
how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those
are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative
power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and
thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest measure
permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive.
Only it must be real thought and real beauty; real sweetness
and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as
they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the
way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses.
The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of
working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrin-
ate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting
the creed of their own profession or party. Our religious and
political organizations give an example of this way of working on
the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differ-
ently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior
classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its
own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to
do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought
and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men
live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may
## p. 862 (#284) ############################################
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MATTHEW ARNOLD
use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely,- nourished and not
bound by them.
This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true
apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who
have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying
from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best
ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all
that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive;
to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cul-
tivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and
thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness
and light. Such a man was Abélard in the Middle Ages, in spite
of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless emotion and
enthusiasm which Abélard excited. Such were Lessing and
Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their
services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Gen-
erations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and
works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder
will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of these two
men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as
the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And
why? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broad-
ened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked
powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the
will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said:- "Let us
not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as
thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of
light from darkness; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their
firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the divis
ion of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times;
for the old order is passed, and the new arises; the night is
spent, the day is come forth; and thou shalt crown the year with
thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest
sown by other hands than theirs; when thou shalt send forth new
laborers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet. "
Keeping this in view, I have in my own mind often indulged
myself with the fancy of employing, in order to designate our
aristocratic class, the name of The Barbarians. The Barbarians,
to whom we all owe so much, and who reinvigorated and renewed
our worn-out Europe, had, as is well known, eminent merits;
and in this country, where we are for the most part sprung from
## p. 863 (#285) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
863
the Barbarians, we have never had the prejudice against them.
which prevails among the races of Latin origin. The Barbarians
brought with them that stanch individualism, as the modern
phrase is, and that passion for doing as one likes, for the asser-
tion of personal liberty, which appears to Mr. Bright the central
idea of English life, and of which we have at any rate a very
rich supply. The stronghold and natural seat of this passion
was in the nobles of whom our aristocratic class are the inherit-
ors; and this class, accordingly, have signally manifested it, and
have done much by their example to recommend it to the body
of the nation, who already, indeed, had it in their blood. The
Barbarians, again, had the passion for field-sports; and they have
handed it on to our aristocratic class, who of this passion, too,
as of the passion for asserting one's personal liberty, are the
great natural stronghold. The care of the Barbarians for the
body, and for all manly exercises; the vigor, good looks, and
fine complexion which they acquired and perpetuated in their
families by these means,- all this may be observed still in our
aristocratic class. The chivalry of the Barbarians, with its char-
acteristics of high spirit, choice manners, and distinguished bear-
ing,-what is this but the attractive commencement of the
politeness of our aristocratic class? In some Barbarian noble,
no doubt, one would have admired, if one could have been then
alive to see it, the rudiments of our politest peer. Only, all this
culture (to call it by that name) of the Barbarians was an exte-
rior culture mainly. It consisted principally in outward gifts and
graces, in looks, manners, accomplishments, prowess. The chief
inward gifts which had part in it were the most exterior, so to
speak, of inward gifts, those which come nearest to outward ones;
they were courage, a high spirit, self-confidence. Far within,
and unawakened, lay a whole range of powers of thought and
feeling, to which these interesting productions of nature had,
from the circumstances of their life, no access. Making allow-
ances for the difference of the times, surely we can observe
precisely the same thing now in our aristocratic class. In general
its culture is exterior chiefly; all the exterior graces and accom-
plishments, and the more external of the inward virtues, seem
to be principally its portion. It now, of course, cannot but be
often in contact with those studies by which, from the world of
thought and feeling, true culture teaches us to fetch sweetness
and light; but its hold upon these very studies appears remarkably
-
## p. 864 (#286) ############################################
864
MATTHEW ARNOLD
external, and unable to exert any deep power upon its spirit.
Therefore the one insufficiency which we noted in the perfect
mean of this class was an insufficiency of light.
And owing
to the same causes, does not a subtle criticism lead us to make,
even on the good looks and politeness of our aristocratic class,
and of even the most fascinating half of that class, the fem-
inine half, the one qualifying remark, that in these charming
gifts there should perhaps be, for ideal perfection, a shade more
soul?
I often, therefore, when I want to distinguish clearly the
aristocratic class from the Philistines proper, or middle class,
name the former, in my own mind, The Barbarians. And when
I go through the country, and see this and that beautiful and
imposing seat of theirs crowning the landscape, "There," I say
to myself, "is a great fortified post of the Barbarians. "
OXFORD
From Essays in Criticism'
N°
WE are all seekers still! seekers often make mistakes, and
I wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and not
to touch Oxford. Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely,
so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so
serene!
"There are our young barbarians all at play! "
And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gar-
dens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last
enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by
her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal
of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, to beauty, in a word,
which is only truth seen from another side? — nearer, perhaps,
than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose
heart has been so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally,
given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the
Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpop-
ular names, and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so
inspire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher
could ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all
prone, that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on
-
## p. 865 (#287) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
865
the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise (and
nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to have left miles out of
sight behind him: the bondage of "was uns alle bandigt, Das
Gemeine! " She will forgive me, even if I have unwittingly
drawn upon her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son; for
she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after all, hers.
Apparitions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the Phi-
listines, compared with the warfare which this queen of romance
has been waging against them for centuries, and will wage after
we are gone?
TO A FRIEND
WHO
но prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind? -
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him. But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
YOUTH AND CALM
'TIS
Is death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
II-55
## p. 866 (#288) ############################################
866
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath-
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.
WE
ISOLATION
TO MARGUERITE
E WERE apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learned-
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturned.
Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell-
Thou lov'st no more;-Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! -and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign-
Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion's sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved
How vain a thing is mortal love,
## p. 867 (#289) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
867
Wandering in Heaven, far removed;
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth-to prove, and make thine own:
"Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone. "
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things-
Ocean and clouds and night and day;
Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;
And life, and others' joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.
Of happier men- for they, at least,
Have dreamed two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith released
From isolation without end
Prolonged; nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollow lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour—
Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain-
Oh, might our marges meet again!
Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire? -
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea
## p. 868 (#290) ############################################
868
MATTHEW ARNOLD
STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF OBERMANN' (1849)
IN
IN FRONT the awful Alpine track
Crawls up its rocky stair;
The autumn storm-winds drive the rack,
Close o'er it. in the air.
Behind are the abandoned baths
Mute in their meadows lone;
The leaves are on the valley-paths,
The mists are on the Rhone —
The white mists rolling like a sea!
I hear the torrents roar.
- Yes, Obermann, all speaks of thee;
I feel thee near once more.
I turn thy leaves! I feel their breath
Once more upon me roll;
That air of languor, cold, and death,
Which brooded o'er thy soul.
Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe'er thou art,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain-air
Fresh through these pages blows;
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows;
Though here a mountain-murmur swells
Of many a dark-boughed pine;
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine-
Yet, through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain-bee,
There sobs I know not what ground-tone
Of human agony.
Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
## p. 869 (#291) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
869
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?
And then we turn, thou sadder sage,
To thee! we feel thy spell!
-
- The hopeless tangle of our age,
Thou too hast scanned it well!
Immovable thou sittest, still
As death, composed to bear!
Thy head is clear, thy feeling chill,
And icy thy despair.
He who hath watched, not shared, the strife,
Knows how the day hath gone.
He only lives with the world's life
Who hath renounced his own.
To thee we come, then! Clouds are rolled
Where thou, O seer! art set;
Thy realm of thought is drear and cold-
The world is colder yet!
And thou hast pleasures, too, to share
With those who come to thee-
Balms floating on thy mountain-air,
And healing sights to see.
-
How often, where the slopes are green
On Jaman, hast thou sate
By some high chalet-door, and seen
The summer-day grow late;
And darkness steal o'er the wet grass
With the pale crocus starr'd,
And reach that glimmering sheet of glass
Beneath the piny sward,
Lake Leman's waters, far below!
And watched the rosy light
Fade from the distant peaks of snow;
And on the air of night
Heard accents of the eternal tongue
Through the pine branches play —
## p. 870 (#292) ############################################
870
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Listened and felt thyself grow young!
Listened, and wept-Away!
Away the dreams that but deceive!
And thou, sad guide, adieu!
I go, fate drives me; but I leave
Half of my life with you.
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
I in the world must live; - but thou,
Thou melancholy shade!
Wilt not, if thou can'st see me now,
Condemn me, nor upbraid.
For thou art gone away from earth,
And place with those dost claim,
The Children of the Second Birth,
Whom the world could not tame.
Farewell! Whether thou now liest near
That much-loved inland sea,
The ripples of whose blue waves cheer
Vevey and Meillerie;
And in that gracious region bland,
Where with clear-rustling wave
The scented pines of Switzerland
Stand dark round thy green grave,
Between the dusty vineyard-walls
Issuing on that green place,
The early peasant still recalls
The pensive stranger's face,
And stoops to clear thy moss-grown date
Ere he plods on again;
Or whether, by maligner fate,
Among the swarms of men,
Where between granite terraces
The blue Seine rolls her wave,
## p. 871 (#293) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
871
The Capital of Pleasures sees
Thy hardly-heard-of grave;-
-
Farewell! Under the sky we part,
In this stern Alpine dell.
O unstrung will! O broken heart!
A last, a last farewell!
MEMORIAL VERSES (1850)
OETHE in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
G Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease,
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.
When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watched the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.
When Goethe's death was told, we said,
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
-
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said. The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.
## p. 872 (#294) ############################################
872
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And Wordsworth! -Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us--and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen-on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth,
On the cool, flowery lap of earth.
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sunlit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain,
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.
Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?
Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.
## p. 873 (#295) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
873
THE SICK KING IN BOKHARA
O
HUSSEIN
MOST just Vizier, send away
The cloth-merchants, and let them be,
Them and their dues, this day! the King
Is ill at ease, and calls for thee.
THE VIZIER
O merchants, tarry yet a day
Here in Bokhara! but at noon,
To-morrow, come, and ye shall pay
Each fortieth web of cloth to me,
As the law is, and go your way.
O Hussein, lead me to the King!
Thou teller of sweet tales,- thine own,
Ferdousi's, and the others',- lead!
How is it with my lord?
HUSSEIN
Alone,
Ever since prayer-time, he doth wait,
O Vizier! without lying down,
In the great window of the gate,
Looking into the Registàn,
Where through the sellers' booths the slaves
Are this way bringing the dead man. —
O Vizier, here is the King's door!
THE KING
O Vizier, I may bury him?
THE VIZIER
O King, thou know'st, I have been sick
These many days, and heard no thing
(For Allah shut my ears and mind),
Not even what thou dost, O King!
Wherefore, that I may counsel thee,
Let Hussein, if thou wilt, make haste
To speak in order what hath chanced.
## p. 874 (#296) ############################################
874
MATTHEW ARNOLD
THE KING
O izier, be it as thou say'st!
HUSSEIN
Three days since, at the time of prayer,
A certain Moollah, with his robe
All rent, and dust upon his hair,
Watched my lord's coming forth, and pushed
The golden mace-bearers aside,
And fell at the King's feet, and cried:-
"Justice, O King, and on myself!
On this great sinner, who did break
The law, and by the law must die!
Vengeance, O King! "
—
But the King spake :-
"What fool is this, that hurts our ears
With folly? or what drunken slave?
My guards, what, prick him with your spears!
Prick me the fellow from the path! "
As the King said, so was it done,
And to the mosque my lord passed on.
--
But on the morrow when the King
Went forth again, the holy book
Carried before him, as his right,
And through the square his way he took,
My man comes running, flecked with blood
From yesterday, and falling down
Cries out most earnestly:-"O King,
My lord, O King, do right, I pray!
"How canst thou, ere thou hear, discern
If I speak folly? but a king,
Whether a thing be great or small,
Like Allah, hears and judges all.
"Wherefore hear thou! Thou know'st how fierce
In these last days the sun hath burned;
That the green water in the tanks
Is to a putrid puddle turned;
And the canal, that from the stream
Of Samarcand is brought this way,
Wastes, and runs thinner every day.
## p. 875 (#297) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
875
"Now I at nightfall had gone forth
Alone, and in a darksome place
Under some mulberry trees I found
A little pool; and in short space
With all the water that was there
I filled my pitcher, and stole home
Unseen; and having drink to spare,
I hid the can behind the door,
And went up on the roof to sleep.
"But in the night, which was with wind
And burning dust, again I creep
Down, having fever, for a drink.
"Now meanwhile had my brethren found
The water-pitcher, where it stood
Behind the door upon the ground,
And called my mother; and they all,
As they were thirsty, and the night
Most sultry, drained the pitcher there;
That they sate with it, in my sight,
Their lips still wet, when I came down.
"Now mark! I, being fevered, sick
(Most unblest also), at that sight
Brake forth, and cursed them-dost thou hear? —
One was my mother- Now, do right! "
But my lord mused a space, and said:-
:-
"Send him away, sirs, and make on!
It is some madman! ” the King said.
As the King bade, so was it done.
The morrow, at the self-same hour,
In the King's path, behold, the man,
Not kneeling, sternly fixed! he stood
Right opposite, and thus began,
Frowning grim down:-"Thou wicked King,
Most deaf where thou shouldst most give ear!
What, must I howl in the next world,
Because thou wilt not listen here?
"What, wilt thou pray, and get thee grace,
And all grace shall to me be grudged?
Nay, but I swear, from this thy path
I will not stir till I be judged! "
## p. 876 (#298) ############################################
876
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Then they who stood about the King
Drew close together and conferred;
Till that the King stood forth and said,
"Before the priests thou shalt be heard. "
But when the Ulemas were met,
And the thing heard, they doubted not;
But sentenced him, as the law is,
To die by stoning on the spot.
Now the King charged us secretly:-
"Stoned must he be, the law stands so.
Yet, if he seek to fly, give way;
Hinder him not, but let him go. "
So saying, the King took a stone,
And cast it softly;- but the man,
With a great joy upon his face,
Kneeled down, and cried not, neither ran.
-
So they, whose lot it was, cast stones,
That they flew thick and bruised him sore,
But he praised Allah with loud voice,
And remained kneeling as before.
My lord had covered up his face;
But when one told him, "He is dead,"
Turning him quickly to go in,-
་་ Bring thou to me his corpse," he said.
-
THE VIZIER
And truly while I speak, O King,
I hear the bearers on the stair;
Wilt thou they straightway bring him in?
-Ho! enter ye who tarry there!
O King, in this I praise thee not.
Now must I call thy grief not wise,
Is he thy friend, or of thy blood,
To find such favor in thine eyes?
Nay, were he thine own mother's son,
Still, thou art king, and the law stands.
It were not meet the balance swerved,
The sword were broken in thy hands.
But being nothing, as he is,
Why for no cause make sad thy face? —
## p. 877 (#299) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
877
Lo, I am old! Three kings, ere thee,
Have I seen reigning in this place.
But who, through all this length of time,
Could bear the burden of his years,
If he for strangers pained his heart
Not less than those who merit tears?
Fathers we must have, wife and child,
And grievous is the grief for these;
This pain alone, which must be borne,
Makes the head white, and bows the knees.
But other loads than this his own
One man is not well made to bear.
Besides, to each are his own friends,
To mourn with him, and show him care.
Look, this is but one single place,
Though it be great; all the earth round,
If a man bear to have it so,
Things which might vex him shall be found.
All these have sorrow, and keep still,
Whilst other men make cheer, and sing,
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No, nor on this dead dog, O King!
THE KING
O Vizier, thou art old, I young!
Clear in these things I cannot see.
My head is burning, and a heat
Is in my skin which angers me.
But hear ye this, ye sons of men!
They that bear rule, and are obeyed,
Unto a rule more strong than theirs
Are in their turn obedient made.
In vain therefore, with wistful eyes
Gazing up hither, the poor man
Who loiters by the high-heaped booths,
Below there in the Registàn,
Says: "Happy he, who lodges there!
With silken raiment, store of rice,
## p. 878 (#300) ############################################
878
MATTHEW ARNOLD
And for this drought, all kinds of fruits,
Grape-syrup, squares of colored ice,
With cherries served in drifts of snow. "
In vain hath a king power to build
Houses, arcades, enameled mosques;
And to make orchard-closes, filled
With curious fruit-trees brought from far;
With cisterns for the winter rain;
And in the desert, spacious inns
In divers places-if that pain
Is not more lightened, which he feels,
If his will be not satisfied;
And that it be not, from all time
The law is planted, to abide.
Thou wast a sinner, thou poor man!
Thou wast athirst, and didst not see
That, though we take what we desire,
We must not snatch it eagerly.
And I have meat and drink at will,
And rooms of treasures, not a few,
But I am sick, nor heed I these;
And what I would, I cannot do.
Even the great honor which I have,
When I am dead, will soon grow still;
So have I neither joy nor fame-
But what I can do, that I will.
I have a fretted brickwork tomb
Upon a hill on the right hand,
Hard by a close of apricots,
Upon the road of Samarcand;
Thither, O Vizier, will I bear
This man my pity could not save,
And plucking up the marble flags,
There lay his body in my grave.
Bring water, nard, and linen rolls!
Wash off all blood, set smooth each limb!
Then say: "He was not wholly vile,
Because a king shall bury him. "
## p. 879 (#301) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
879
THE
DOVER BEACH
HE sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Egean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
## p. 880 (#302) ############################################
880
MATTHEW ARNOLD
WEARY
SELF-DEPENDENCE
EARY of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you. "
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:-
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.
"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see. "
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
:-
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery! "
## p. 881 (#303) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
881
I
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
H, HIDE me in your gloom profound,
Ο" Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowled forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!
For the world cries your faith is now
But a dead time's exploded dream;
My melancholy, sciolists say,
Is a passed mood, and outworn theme —
As if the world had ever had
A faith, or sciolists been sad!
Ah, if it be passed, take away
At least the restlessness, the pain!
Be man henceforth no more a prey
To these out-dated stings again!
The nobleness of grief is gone-
Ah, leave us not the fret alone!
But if you cannot give us ease
Last of the race of them who grieve,
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent the best are silent now.
―
Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb;
Silent they are, though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.
Our fathers watered with their tears
This sea of time whereon we sail;
Their voices were in all men's ears
Who passed within their puissant hail.
Still the same ocean round us raves,
But we stand mute and watch the waves.
II-56
## p. 882 (#304) ############################################
882
MATTHEW ARNOLD
For what availed it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men? -
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then?
The sufferers died, they left their pain-
The pangs which tortured them remain.
What helps it now that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mocked the smart,
Through Europe to the Etolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?
What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze
Carried thy lovely wail away,
Musical through Italian trees
Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay?
Inheritors of thy distress,
Have restless hearts one throb the less?
Or are we easier to have read,
O Obermann! the sad, stern page,
Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head
From the fierce tempest of thine age
In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau,
Or châlets near the Alpine snow?
Ye slumber in your silent grave!
The world, which for an idle day
Grace to your mood of sadness gave,
Long since hath flung her weeds away.
The eternal trifler breaks your spell;
But we -we learnt your lore too well!
Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age,
More fortunate, alas! than we,
Which without hardness will be sage,
And gay without frivolity.
Sons of the world, oh, speed those years;
But while we wait, allow our tears!
## p. 883 (#305) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
883
A SUMMER NIGHT
IN
IN THE deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world, but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon's rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!
And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene:
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long wide sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair-
But the same restless pacings to and fro,
And the same vainly throbbing heart was there,
And the same bright, calm moon.
And the calm moonlight seems to say:-
Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,
Which neither deadens into rest,
Nor ever feels the fiery glow
That whirls the spirit from itself away,
But fluctuates to and fro,
--
Never by passion quite possessed
And never quite benumbed by the world's sway? —
And I, I know not if to pray
Still to be what I am, or yield, and be
Like all the other men I see.
For most men in a brazen prison live,
Where, in the sun's hot eye,
With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly
Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give,
Dreaming of naught beyond their prison wall.
And as, year after year,
## p. 884 (#306) ############################################
884
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Fresh products of their barren labor fall
From their tired hands, and rest
Never yet comes more near,
Gloom settles slowly down over their breast.
And while they try to stem
The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest,
Death in their prison reaches them,
Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.
And the rest, a few,
Escape their prison and depart
On the wide ocean of life anew.
There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart
Listeth will sail;
Nor doth he know how there prevail,
Despotic on that sea,
Trade-winds which cross it from eternity:
Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves.
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck
With anguished face and flying hair
Grasping the rudder hard,
Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
And sterner comes the roar
Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom
Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom,
And he too disappears, and comes no more.
Is there no life, but these alone?
Madman or slave, must man be one?
Plainness and clearness without shadow of stain!
Clearness divine!
Ye heavens, whose pure dark regions have no sign
Of languor, though so calm, and though so great
Are yet untroubled and unpassionate;
Who, though so noble, share in the world's toil,
And, though so tasked, keep free from dust and soil!
I will not say that your mild deeps retain
A tinge, it may be, of their silent pain
Who have longed deeply once, and longed in vain
But I will rather say that you remain
## p. 885 (#307) ############################################
MATTHEW ARNOLD
885
A world above man's head, to let him see
How boundless might his soul's horizons be,
How vast, yet of what clear transparency!
How it were good to live there, and breathe free;
How fair a lot to fill
Is left to each man still!
THE BETTER PART
L
ONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man,
How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare!
"Christ," some one says, "was human as we are;
No judge eyes us from Heaven, our sin to scan;
We live no more when we have done our span. "—
"Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can care?
From sin, which Heaven records not, why forbear?
Live we like brutes our life without a plan ! »
So answerest thou; but why not rather say,
"Hath man no second life? - Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see? —
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? -Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he! "
THE LAST WORD
REEP into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
C
Let the long contention cease!
