Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888)
English poet, essayist and cultural critic.
The translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author: — that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble.
The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into an Englishman's thoughts.
It is — last stage of all —
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.
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!
Of these two literatures, as of the intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many years, has been a critical effort; the endeavour, in all branches of knowledge — theology, philosophy, history, art, science — to see the object as in itself it really is.
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
However, if I shall live to be eighty I shall probably be the only person left in England who reads anything but newspapers and scientific publications.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well — but ’tis not true!
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men,
And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.
Who 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.
I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer-nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt’s rope chops round.
And amongst us one,
Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne.
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.
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away.
Hither and thither spins
The wind-borne mirroring soul,
A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole.