Matthew Arnold

Progress

The Master stood upon the mount, and taught. He saw a fire in his disciplesвЂ™ eyes; ВЂThe old lawвЂ™, they said, вЂis wholly come to naught! Behold the new world rise! вЂ™ ВЂWas itвЂ™,

The Future

A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; Brimming with wonder and joy He spreads out his arms to the light,

Hark! ah, the nightingale – The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!-what pain! O wanderer from a Grecian shore, Still, after many years, in distant lands, Still nourishing

Apollo Musagetes

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, Thick breaks the red flame; All Etna heaves fiercely Her forest-clothed frame. Not here, O Apollo! Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to

Worldly Place

Even in a palace, life may be led well! So spake the imperial sage, purest of men, Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, Our freedom for a

Bacchanalia

The evening comes, the fields are still. The tinkle of the thirsty rill, Unheard all day, ascends again; Deserted is the half-mown plain, Silent the swaths! the ringing wain, The mower’s cry, the dog’s

Self-Dependence

Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o’er the starlit sea. And a look

Morality

We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides; The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides. But tasks in hours of insight will’d Can be through

Growing Old

What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Yes, but not for this alone.

West London

Crouch’d on the pavement close by Belgrave Square A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied; A babe was in her arms, and at her side A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet

Requiescat

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too! Her mirth the world required; She bathed it in smiles of glee. But

To a Republican Friend

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize Those virtues, priz’d and practis’d by too few, But priz’d, but lov’d, but eminent in you, Man’s fundamental life: if to despise The barren

Thyrsis, a Monody

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills! In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same; The village street its haunted mansion lacks, And from the sign is gone Sibylla’s name, And

Memorial Verses

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece, Long since, saw Byron’s struggle cease. But one such death remain’d to come; The last poetic voice is dumb We stand to-day by Wordsworth’s tomb. When Byron’s eyes

Cadmus and Harmonia

Far, far from here, The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay Among the green Illyrian hills; and there The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, And by the sea, and in the brakes.

The Forsaken Merman

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses

To Marguerite

Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds

The Scholar Gypsy

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropped

The Pagan World

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, The Roman noble lay; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the Appian way. He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, And crowned his hair with

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused With rain, where thick the crocus blows, Past the dark forges long disused, The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. The bridge is cross’d, and slow we ride, Through forest, up

Strayed Reveller, The

The Youth Faster, faster, O Circe, Goddess, Let the wild, thronging train The bright procession Of eddying forms, Sweep through my soul! Thou standest, smiling Down on me! thy right arm, Lean’d up against

Rugby Chapel

Coldly, sadly descends The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither’d leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent; hardly a shout From a few boys late at their

Song of Callicles, The

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, Thick breaks the red flame. All Etna heaves fiercely Her forest-clothed frame. Not here, O Apollo! Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to

The Buried Life

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet, Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet! I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll. Yes, yes, we know that we can jest, We know,

Hayeswater

A region desolate and wild. Black, chafing water: and afloat, And lonely as a truant child In a waste wood, a single boat: No mast, no sails are set thereon; It moves, but never

East London

‘Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited. I met a preacher there I

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 stedfast footsteps in the

Sohrab and Rustum

And the first grey of morning fill’d the east, And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream. But all the Tartar camp along the stream Was hush’d, and still the men were plunged

Isolation: To Marguerite

We were apart; yet, day by day, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away, And grow a home for only thee; Nor fear’d but thy love likewise

To A Friend

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

The Voice

As the kindling glances, Queen-like and clear, Which the bright moon lances From her tranquil sphere At the sleepless waters Of a lonely mere, On the wild whirling waves, mournfully, mournfully, Shiver and die.

Youth and Calm

‘Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here, And ease from shame, and rest from fear. There’s nothing can dismarble now The smoothness of that limpid brow. But is a calm like this, in truth,

Consolation

Mist clogs the sunshine. Smoky dwarf houses Hem me round everywhere; A vague dejection Weighs down my soul. Yet, while I languish, Everywhere countless Prospects unroll themselves, And countless beings Pass countless moods. Far

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For so the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. Come, as thou cam’st a

Obermann Once More

Glion? Ah, twenty years, it cuts All meaning from a name! White houses prank where once were huts. Glion, but not the same! And yet I know not! All unchanged The turf, the pines,

Mycerinus

‘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

The Song Of Empedocles

And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines! Have you, too, survived yourselves? Are you, too, what I fear to become?

Lines Written in Kensington Gardens

In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crown’d, red-boled pine-trees stand! Birds here make song, each bird has

The Strayed Reveller

1 Faster, faster, 2 O Circe, Goddess, 3 Let the wild, thronging train 4 The bright procession 5 Of eddying forms, 6 Sweep through my soul! 7 Thou standest, smiling 8 Down on me!

The Last Word

Creep into thy narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said! Vain thy onset! all stands fast. Thou thyself must break at last! Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans

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

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 the Hymn of Empedocles

IS it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanced true friends, and beat