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Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

To George Cruikshank, Esq.

ON SEEING FOR THE FIRST TIME HIS PICTURE OF ‘THE BOTTLE’, IN THE COUNTRY

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, urg’d too fiercely, says:
‘Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man  
May be by man effac’d: man can control  
To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.  
Know thou the worst. So much, not more, he can.’

First published 1849

#EnglishWriters #Sonnet

Other works by Matthew Arnold...
Memorial Verses

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Gree… Long since, saw Byron’s struggle… But one such death remain’d to com… The last poetic voice is dumb. What shall be said o’er Wordswort…
The Youth of Nature

“Yourselves and your fellows ye know not; and me, The mateless, the one, will ye know? Will ye scan me, and read me, and tell Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast, My longing, my s...
Cadmus and Harmonia

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

Go, for they call you, shepherd, f… Go, shepherd, and untie the wattle… No longer leave thy wistful flock… Nor let thy bawling fellows rack t… Nor the cropp’d herbage shoot anot…
The New Sirens

In * the cedar shadow sleeping, Where cool grass and fragrant gloo… Oft at noon have lur’d me, creepin… From your darken’d palace rooms: I, who in your train at morning…
Stanzas on a Gipsy Child by the Sea-shore

WHO taught this pleading to unpra… Who hid such import in an infant’s… Who lent thee, child, this meditat… What clouds thy forehead, and fore… Lo! sails that gleam a moment and…
Absence

In this fair stranger’s eyes of gr… 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 no…
 1
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;
The World and the Quietist

Why, when the World’s great mind Hath finally inclin’d, Why, you say, Critias, be debatin… Why, with these mournful rhymes Learn’d in more languid climes,
Balder Dead

So on the floor lay Balder dead;… Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, d… Which all the Gods in sport had i… At Balder, whom no weapon pierced… But in his breast stood fixt the f…
On the Rhine

Vain is the effort to forget. Some day I shall be cold, I know, As is the eternal moon-lit snow Of the high Alps, to which I go: But ah, not yet! not yet!
Revolutions

Before man parted for this earthly… While yet upon the verge of heaven… God put a heap of letters in his h… And bade him make with them what w… And man has turn’d them many times…
Too Late

Each on his own strict line we mov… And some find death ere they find… So far apart their lives are throw… From the twin soul that halves the… And sometimes, by still harder fat…
A Caution to Poets

What poets feel not, when they mak… A pleasure in creating, The world, in its turn, will not t… Pleasure in contemplating.
Excuse

I too have suffer’d: yet I know She is not cold, though she seems… She is not cold, she is not light; But our ignoble souls lack might. She smiles and smiles, and will no…



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