Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888)
English poet, essayist and cultural critic.
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.
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.
Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
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.
Resolve to be thyself; and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men,
And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine.
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!
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.
We, in some unknown Power's employ,
Move on a rigorous line;
Can neither, when we will, enjoy,
Nor, when we will, resign.
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.
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!
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.
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.
To thee only God granted
A heart ever new:
To all always open;
To all always true.
It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.
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.
Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.