Classic Poetry Series Matthew Arnold - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Matthew Arnold(1822-1888) Although remembered now for his elegantly argued critical essays, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) began his career as a poet, winning early recognition as a student at the Rugby School where his father, Thomas Arnold, had earned national acclaim as a strict and innovative headmaster. Arnold also studied at Balliol College, Oxford University. In 1844, after completing his undergraduate degree at Oxford, he returned to Rugby as a teacher of classics. After marrying in 1851, Arnold began work as a government school inspector, a grueling position which nonetheless afforded him the opportunity to travel throughout England and the Continent. Throughout his thirty-five years in this position Arnold developed an interest in education, an interest which fed into both his critical works and his poetry. Empedocles on Etna (1852) and Poems (1853) established Arnold's reputation as a poet and in 1857 he was offered a position, which he accepted and held until 1867, as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Arnold became the first professor to lecture in English rather than Latin. During this time Arnold wrote the bulk of his most famous critical works, Essays in Criticism (1865) and Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he sets forth ideas that greatly reflect the predominant values of the Victorian era. Meditative and rhetorical, Arnold's poetry often wrestles with problems of psychological isolation. In "To Marguerite—Continued," for example, Arnold revises Donne's assertion that "No man is an island," suggesting that we "mortals" are indeed "in the sea of life enisled." Other well-known poems, such as "Dover Beach," link the problem of isolation with what Arnold saw as the dwindling faith of his time. Despite his own religious doubts, a source of great anxiety for him, in several essays Arnold sought to establish the essential truth of Christianity. His most influential essays, however, were those on literary topics. In "The Function of Criticism" (1865) and "The Study of Poetry" (1880) Arnold called for a new epic poetry: a poetry that would address the moral needs of his readers, "to animate and ennoble them." Arnold's arguments, for a renewed religious faith and an adoption of classical aesthetics and morals, are particularly representative of mainstream Victorian intellectual concerns. His approach—his gentlemanly and subtle style—to these issues, however, established criticism as an art form, and has influenced almost every major English critic since, including T. S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling, and Harold Bloom. Though perhaps less obvious, the tremendous influence of his poetry, which addresses the poet's most innermost feelings with complete transparency, can easily be seen in writers as different from each other as W. B. Yeats, James Wright, Sylvia Plath, and Sharon Olds. Late in life, in 1883 and 1886, Arnold made two lecturing tours of the United States. Matthew Arnold died in Liverpool in 1888. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1 A Dream Was it a dream? We sail'd, I thought we sail'd, Martin and I, down the green Alpine stream, Border'd, each bank, with pines; the morning sun, On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops, On the red pinings of their forest-floor, Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines The mountain-skirts, with all their sylvan change Of bright-leaf'd chestnuts and moss'd walnut-trees And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began. Swiss chalets glitter'd on the dewy slopes, And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came Notes of wild pastoral music--over all Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow. Upon the mossy rocks at the stream's edge, Back'd by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood, Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant's leaves Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within, Under the eaves, peer'd rows of Indian corn. We shot beneath the cottage with the stream. On the brown, rude-carved balcony, two forms Came forth--Olivia's, Marguerite! and thine. Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast; Straw hats bedeck'd their heads, with ribbons blue, Which danced, and on their shoulders, fluttering, play'd. They saw us, they conferred; their bosoms heaved, And more than mortal impulse fill'd their eyes. Their lips moved; their white arms, waved eagerly, Flash'd once, like falling streams; we rose, we gazed. One moment, on the rapid's top, our boat Hung poised--and then the darting river of Life (Such now, methought, it was), the river of Life, Loud thundering, bore us by; swift, swift it foam'd, Black under cliffs it raced, round headlands shone. Soon the plank'd cottage by the sun-warm'd pines Faded--the moss--the rocks; us burning plains, Bristled with cities, us the sea received. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 Matthew Arnold www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 A Summer Night 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. www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4 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, 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? www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5 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 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! Matthew Arnold www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 6 A Wish I ask not that my bed of death From bands of greedy heirs be free; For these besiege the latest breath Of fortune's favoured sons, not me. I ask not each kind soul to keep Tearless, when of my death he hears; Let those who will, if any, weep! There are worse plagues on earth than tears. I ask but that my death may find The freedom to my life denied; Ask but the folly of mankind, Then, at last, to quit my side. Spare me the whispering, crowded room, The friends who come, and gape, and go; The ceremonious air of gloom - All which makes death a hideous show! Nor bring, to see me cease to live, Some doctor full of phrase and fame, To shake his sapient head and give The ill he cannot cure a name. Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll Of the poor sinner bound for death, His brother doctor of the soul, To canvass with official breath The future and its viewless things - That undiscovered mystery Which one who feels death's winnowing wings Must need read clearer, sure, than he! Bring none of these; but let me be, While all around in silence lies, Moved to the window near, and see Once more before my dying eyes www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 7 Bathed in the sacred dew of morn The wide aerial landscape spread - The world which was ere I was born, The world which lasts when I am dead. Which never was the friend of one, Nor promised love it could not give, But lit for all its generous sun, And lived itself, and made us live. There let me gaze, till I become In soul with what I gaze on wed! To feel the universe my home; To have before my mind -instead Of the sick-room, the mortal strife, The turmoil for a little breath - The pure eternal course of life, Not human combatings with death. Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear; Then willing let my spirit go To work or wait elsewhere or here! Matthew Arnold www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 8 Absence IN THIS fair stranger’s eyes of grey Thine eyes, my love, I see. I shudder: for the passing day Had borne me far from thee. This is the curse of life: that not A nobler calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain; But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok’d souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will. I struggle towards the light; and ye, Once-long’d-for storms of love! If with the light ye cannot be, I bear that ye remove. I struggle towards the light; but oh, While yet the night is chill, Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow, Stay with me, Marguerite, still! Matthew Arnold www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 9