Matthew Arnold

Written in Butler’s Sermons

AFFECTIONS, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,  
Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control—  
So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,  
Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.  
Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see,    
Spring the foundations of the shadowy throne  
Where man’s one Nature, queen-like, sits alone,  
Centred in a majestic unity;  
And rays her powers, like sister islands, seen  
Linking their coral arms under the sea:  
Or cluster’d peaks, with plunging gulfs between  
Spann’d by aërial arches, all of gold;  
Whereo’er the chariot wheels of Life are roll’d  
In cloudy circles, to eternity.

First published 1849.

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