The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold

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Title: Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold

Author: Matthew Arnold

Release date: January 7, 2009 [eBook #27739]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Carla Foust, J. C. Byers, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETICAL WORKS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD ***

E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Carla Foust, J. C. Byers,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

Transcriber's note

Printer errors have been corrected, and they are indicated with a mouse-hover and listed at the end of this book. The author's spelling has been retained.

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MATTHEW ARNOLD

First Complete Edition printed September 1890.
Reprinted November and December 1890. July 1891.

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MATTHEW ARNOLD

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK

1891

EARLY POEMS

Sonnets—	PAGE
Quiet Work	1
To a Friend	2
Shakespeare	2
Written in Emerson's Essays	3
Written in Butler's Sermons	4
To the Duke of Wellington	4
In Harmony With Nature	5
To George Cruikshank	6
To a Republican Friend, 1848	6
Continued	7
Religious Isolation	8
Mycerinus	8
The Church of Brou
I. The Castle	13
II. The Church	17
III. The Tomb	18
A Modern Sappho	20
Requiescat	21
Youth and Calm	22
A Memory-Picture	23
A Dream	25
The New Sirens	26
The Voice	36
Youth's Agitations	37
The World's Triumphs	38
Stagirius	38
Human Life	40
To a Gipsy Child by the Sea-shore	41
A Question	44
In Utrumque Paratus	45
The World and the Quietist	46
Horatian Echo	47
The Second Best	49
Consolation	50
Resignation	52

NARRATIVE POEMS

Sohrab and Rustum	65
The Sick King in Bokhara	92
Balder Dead—
1. Sending	101
2. Journey To the Dead	111
3. Funeral	121
Tristram and Iseult
Tristram	138
Iseult of Ireland	150
Iseult of Brittany	158
Saint Brandan	165
The Neckan	167
The Forsaken Merman	170

SONNETS

Austerity of Poetry	177
A Picture at Newstead	177
Rachel: I, II, III	178
Worldly Place	180
East London	180
West London	181
East and West	181
The Better Part	182
The Divinity	183
Immortality	183
The Good Shepherd with the Kid	184
Monica's Last Prayer	184

LYRIC POEMS

Switzerland
1. Meeting	189
2. Parting	189
3. A Farewell	192
4. Isolation. To Marguerite	195
5. To Marguerite—Continued	197
6. Absence	198
7. The Terrace at Berne	199
The Strayed Reveller	201
Fragment of an "Antigone"	211
Fragment of Chorus of a "Dejaneira"	214
Early Death and Fame	215
Philomela	216
Urania	217
Euphrosyne	218
Calais Sands	219
Faded Leaves
1. The River	221
2. Too Late	222
3. Separation	222
4. On the Rhine	223
5. Longing	224
Despondency	224
Self-Deception	225
Dover Beach	226
Growing Old	227
The Progress of Poesy	228
New Rome	229
Pis-Aller	230
The Last Word	230
The Lord's Messengers	231
A Nameless Epitaph	232
Bacchanalia; or, The New Age	232
Epilogue to Lessing's Laocoön	236
Persistency of Poetry	243
A Caution to Poets	243
The Youth of Nature	243
The Youth of Man	247
Palladium	251
Progress	252
Revolutions	254
Self-dependence	255
Morality	256
A Summer Night	257
The Buried Life	260
Lines Written in Kensington Gardens	263
A Wish	265
The Future	267

ELEGIAC POEMS

The Scholar-Gipsy	273
Thyrsis	281
Memorial Verses	289
Stanzas in Memory of Edward Quillinan	292
Stanzas from Carnac	292
A Southern Night	294
Haworth Churchyard	299
Epilogue	303
Rugby Chapel	304
Heine's Grave	311
Stanzas From the Grande Chartreuse	318
Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann"	325
Obermann once more	332

DRAMATIC POEMS

Merope, A Tragedy	347
Empedocles on Etna	436

LATER POEMS

Westminster Abbey	479
Geist's Grave	485
Poor Matthias	488
Kaiser Dead	495
Notes	501

EARLY POEMS

SONNETS

QUIET WORK

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity—

Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity!
Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry!

Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,

Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone.

TO A FRIEND

Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind?—
He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul'd of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,[1]
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
Clear'd 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.

SHAKESPEARE

Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foil'd searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess'd at.—Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

WRITTEN IN EMERSON'S ESSAYS

"O monstrous, dead, unprofitable world,
That thou canst hear, and hearing, hold thy way!
A voice oracular hath peal'd to-day,
To-day a hero's banner is unfurl'd;

Hast thou no lip for welcome?"—So I said.
Man after man, the world smiled and pass'd by;
A smile of wistful incredulity
As though one spake of life unto the dead—

Scornful, and strange, and sorrowful, and full
Of bitter knowledge. Yet the will is free;
Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful;

The seeds of godlike power are in us still;
Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will!—
Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery?

WRITTEN IN BUTLER'S SERMONS

Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,
Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control—
So men, unravelling God's harmonious whole,
Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.

Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see,
Spring the foundations of that shadowy throne
Where man's one nature, queen-like, sits alone,
Centred in a majestic unity;

And rays her powers, like sister-islands seen
Linking their coral arms under the sea,
Or cluster'd peaks with plunging gulfs between

Spann'd by aërial arches all of gold,
Whereo'er the chariot wheels of life are roll'd
In cloudy circles to eternity.

TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED

Because thou hast believed, the wheels of life
Stand never idle, but go always round;
Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground,
Moved only; but by genius, in the strife

Of all its chafing torrents after thaw,
Urged; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand,
The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand;
And, in this vision of the general law,

Hast labour'd, but with purpose; hast become
Laborious, persevering, serious, firm—
For this, thy track, across the fretful foam

Of vehement actions without scope or term,
Call'd history, keeps a splendour; due to wit,
Which saw one clue to life, and follow'd it.

IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

TO A PREACHER

"In harmony with Nature?" Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility—
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;
Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;

Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;
Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.

Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!

TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

ON SEEING, IN THE COUNTRY, HIS PICTURE OF "THE BOTTLE"

Artist, whose hand, with horror wing'd, hath torn
From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung
The prodigy of full-blown crime among
Valleys and men to middle fortune born,

Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn—
Say, what shall calm us when such guests intrude
Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
Shall breathless glades, cheer'd by shy Dian's horn,

Cold-bubbling springs, or caves?—Not so! The soul
Breasts her own griefs; and, urged too fiercely, says:
"Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man

May be by man effaced; man can control
To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he can."

TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, prized and practised by too few,
But prized, but loved, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life; if to despise

The barren optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true
(And for such doing they require not eyes);

If sadness at the long heart-wasting show
Wherein earth's great ones are disquieted;
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow

The armies of the homeless and unfed—
If these are yours, if this is what you are,
Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.

CONTINUED

Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud—
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme;

Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream,
Is on all sides o'ershadow'd by the high
Uno'erleap'd Mountains of Necessity,
Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.

Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
When, bursting through the network superposed
By selfish occupation—plot and plan,

Lust, avarice, envy—liberated man,
All difference with his fellow-mortal closed,
Shall be left standing face to face with God.

RELIGIOUS ISOLATION

TO THE SAME FRIEND

Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own—

Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.

What though the holy secret, which moulds thee,
Mould not the solid earth? though never winds
Have whisper'd it to the complaining sea,

Nature's great law, and law of all men's minds?—
To its own impulse every creature stirs;
Live by thy light, and earth will live by hers!

MYCERINUS [2]

"Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

"I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime—that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of youth, self-govern'd, at the feet of Law;
Ennobling this dull pomp, the life of kings,
By contemplation of diviner things.

"My father loved injustice, and lived long;
Crown'd with gray hairs he died, and full of sway.
I loved the good he scorn'd, and hated wrong—
The Gods declare my recompence to-day.
I look'd for life more lasting, rule more high;
And when six years are measured, lo, I die!

"Yet surely, O my people, did I deem
Man's justice from the all-just Gods was given;
A light that from some upper fount did beam,
Some better archetype, whose seat was heaven;
A light that, shining from the blest abodes,
Did shadow somewhat of the life of Gods.

"Mere phantoms of man's self-tormenting heart,
Which on the sweets that woo it dares not feed!
Vain dreams, which quench our pleasures, then depart,
When the duped soul, self-master'd, claims its meed;
When, on the strenuous just man, Heaven bestows,
Crown of his struggling life, an unjust close!

"Seems it so light a thing, then, austere Powers,
To spurn man's common lure, life's pleasant things?
Seems there no joy in dances crown'd with flowers,
Love, free to range, and regal banquetings?
Bend ye on these, indeed, an unmoved eye,
Not Gods but ghosts, in frozen apathy?

"Or is it that some Force, too wise, too strong,
Even for yourselves to conquer or beguile,
Sweeps earth, and heaven, and men, and gods along,
Like the broad volume of the insurgent Nile?
And the great powers we serve, themselves may be
Slaves of a tyrannous necessity?

"Or in mid-heaven, perhaps, your golden cars,
Where earthly voice climbs never, wing their flight,
And in wild hunt, through mazy tracts of stars,
Sweep in the sounding stillness of the night?
Or in deaf ease, on thrones of dazzling sheen,
Drinking deep draughts of joy, ye dwell serene?

"Oh, wherefore cheat our youth, if thus it be,
Of one short joy, one lust, one pleasant dream?
Stringing vain words of powers we cannot see,
Blind divinations of a will supreme;
Lost labour! when the circumambient gloom
But hides, if Gods, Gods careless of our doom?

"The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,
My sand runs short; and—as yon star-shot ray,
Hemm'd by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,
Now, as the barrier closes, dies away—
Even so do past and future intertwine,
Blotting this six years' space, which yet is mine.

"Six years—six little years—six drops of time!
Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,
And old men die, and young men pass their prime,
And languid pleasure fade and flower again,
And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown,
Revels more deep, joy keener than their own.

"Into the silence of the groves and woods
I will go forth; though something would I say—
Something—yet what, I know not; for the Gods
The doom they pass revoke not, nor delay;
And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all,
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall.

"Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!
I go, and I return not. But the will
Of the great Gods is plain; and ye must bring
Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days."

—So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn;
And one loud cry of grief and of amaze
Broke from his sorrowing people; so he spake,
And turning, left them there; and with brief pause,
Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way
To the cool region of the groves he loved.
There by the river-banks he wander'd on,
From palm-grove on to palm-grove, happy trees,
Their smooth tops shining sunward, and beneath
Burying their unsunn'd stems in grass and flowers;
Where in one dream the feverish time of youth
Might fade in slumber, and the feet of joy
Might wander all day long and never tire.
Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn,
Rose-crown'd; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beam'd in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast—
Flush'd guests, and golden goblets foam'd with wine;
While the deep-burnish'd foliage overhead
Splinter'd the silver arrows of the moon.
It may be that sometimes his wondering soul
From the loud joyful laughter of his lips
Might shrink half startled, like a guilty man
Who wrestles with his dream; as some pale shape
Gliding half hidden through the dusky stems,
Would thrust a hand before the lifted bowl,
Whispering: A little space, and thou art mine!
It may be on that joyless feast his eye
Dwelt with mere outward seeming; he, within,
Took measure of his soul, and knew its strength,
And by that silent knowledge, day by day,
Was calm'd, ennobled, comforted, sustain'd.
It may be; but not less his brow was smooth,
And his clear laugh fled ringing through the gloom,
And his mirth quail'd not at the mild reproof
Sigh'd out by winter's sad tranquillity;
Nor, pall'd with its own fulness, ebb'd and died
In the rich languor of long summer-days;
Nor wither'd when the palm-tree plumes, that roof'd
With their mild dark his grassy banquet-hall,
Bent to the cold winds of the showerless spring;
No, nor grew dark when autumn brought the clouds.
So six long years he revell'd, night and day.
And when the mirth wax'd loudest, with dull sound
Sometimes from the grove's centre echoes came,
To tell his wondering people of their king;
In the still night, across the steaming flats,
Mix'd with the murmur of the moving Nile.

Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold

About This Book

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold

Transcriber's note

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MATTHEW ARNOLD

CONTENTS

EARLY POEMS

NARRATIVE POEMS

SONNETS

LYRIC POEMS

ELEGIAC POEMS

DRAMATIC POEMS

LATER POEMS

EARLY POEMS

SONNETS

QUIET WORK

TO A FRIEND

SHAKESPEARE

WRITTEN IN EMERSON'S ESSAYS

WRITTEN IN BUTLER'S SERMONS

TO THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED

IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

TO A PREACHER

TO GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

ON SEEING, IN THE COUNTRY, HIS PICTURE OF "THE BOTTLE"

TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND, 1848

CONTINUED

RELIGIOUS ISOLATION

TO THE SAME FRIEND

MYCERINUS [2]