Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. Arnold Matthew

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ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED

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      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

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TO A PREACHER

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      "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

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

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      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

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      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

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      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,

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