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 knew, and said:
Ill and oerworked, how fare you in this scene?,
Bravely! said he; for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.
O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam,
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!
Thou makst the heaven thou hopst indeed thy home.

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He is best remembered for his poetry, including works like 'Dover Beach,' and his influence on literary and social criticism. Arnold's work often grappled with the social issues and the loss of faith in the modern age, making him a central figure in the transition from Romanticism to Modernism in literature.

Matthew Arnold

East And West

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

Pis-Aller

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

Alaric at Rome

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

Mycerinus

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

English

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Lines

    When London was a little town
    Lean by the river's marge,
    The poet paced it with a frown,
    He thought it very large.

    He loved bright ship and pointing steeple
    And bridge with houses loaded
    And priests and many-coloured people...
    But ah, they were not woaded!

    Not all the walls could shed the spell
    Of meres and marshes green,
    Nor any chaffering merchant tell
    The beauty that had been:

    The crying birds at fall of night,
    The fisher in his coracle,
    And, grim on Ludgate's windy height,
    An oak-tree and an oracle.

    Sick for the past his hair he rent
    And dropt a tear in season;
    If he had cause for his lament
    We have much better reason.

    For n...

John Collings Squire, Sir

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 were bare.
Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across, and begg'd and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.
Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.
She turns from that cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours.

Matthew Arnold

Progress

The Master stood upon the mount, and taught.
He saw a fire in his disciples eyes;
The old law, they said, is wholly come to naught!
Behold the new world rise!

Was it, the Lord then said, with scorn ye saw
The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees?
I say unto you, see ye keep that law
More faithfully than these!

Too hasty heads for ordering worlds, alas!
Think not that I to annul the law have willd;
No jot, no tittle from the law shall pass,
Till all hath been fulfilld.

So Christ said eighteen hundred years ago.
And what then shall be said to those to-day,
Who cry aloud to lay the old world low
To clear the new worlds way?

Religious fervours! ardour misapplied!
Hence, hence, they cry, ye do but keep man blind!

Matthew Arnold

A Summer Night

In the deserted, moon-blanched street,
How lonely rings the echo of my feet!
Those windows, which I gaze at, frown,
Silent and white, unopening down,
Repellent as the world, but see,
A break between the housetops shows
The moon! and lost behind her, fading dim
Into the dewy dark obscurity
Down at the far horizon's rim,
Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose!

And to my mind the thought
Is on a sudden brought
Of a past night, and a far different scene:
Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep
As clearly as at noon;
The spring-tide's brimming flow
Heaved dazzlingly between;
Houses, with long wide sweep,
Girdled the glistening bay;
Behind, through the soft air,
The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away.
That night was far more fair...

Matthew Arnold

To A Gipsy Child By The Sea-Shore

Douglas, Isle of Man


Who taught this pleading to unpractisd eyes?
Who hid such import in an infants gloom?
Who lent thee, child, this meditative guise?
What clouds thy forehead, and fore-dates thy doom?

Lo! sails that gleam a moment and are gone;
The swinging waters, and the clusterd pier.
Not idly Earth and Ocean labour on,
Nor idly do these sea-birds hover near.

But thou, whom superfluity of joy
Wafts not from thine own thoughts, nor longings vain,
Nor weariness, the full-fed souls annoy;
Remaining in thy hunger and thy pain:

Thou, drugging pain by patience; half averse
From thine own mothers breast, that knows not thee;
With eyes that sought thine eyes thou didst converse,
And that soul-searching vision fell on me.<...

Matthew Arnold

East And West

In the bare midst of Anglesey they show
Two springs which close by one another play,
And, Thirteen hundred years agone, they say,
Two saints met often where those waters flow.

One came from Penmon, westward, and a glow
Whitend his face from the suns fronting ray.
Eastward the other, from the dying day;
And he with unsunnd face did always go.

Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark, men said.
The Seër from the East was then in light,
The Seër from the West was then in shade.

Ah! now tis changed. In conquering sunshine bright
The man of the bold West now comes arrayd;
He of the mystic East is touchd with night.

Matthew Arnold