Immortality

Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And, Patience! in another life, we say
The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne.

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they,
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day,
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?

No, no! the energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife,

From strength to strength advancing, only he,
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.

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

Religious Isolation

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

To Fausta

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

Despondency

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

Hayeswater

Matthew Arnold, Simple Poetry

English

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Human Life

What mortal, when he saw,
Lifes voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
I have kept uninfringd my natures law;
The inly-written chart thou gayest me
To guide me, I have steerd by to the end?

Ah! let us make no claim
On lifes incognizable sea
To too exact a steering of our way!
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim
If some fair coast has lured us to make stay,
Or some friend haild us to keep company !

Aye, we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule!
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestowd in vain!
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chances fool.

No! as the foaming swathe
Of torn-...

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

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 keep
Tearless, when of my death he hears;
Let those who will, if any, weep!
There are worse plagues on earth than tears.

I ask but that my death may find
The freedom to my life denied;
Ask but the folly of mankind,
Then, at last, to quit my side.

Spare me the whispering, crowded room,
The friends who come, and gape, and go;
The ceremonious air of gloom -
All which makes death a hideous show!

Nor bring, to see me cease to live,
Some doctor full of phrase and fame,
To shake his sapient head and give
The ill he cannot cure a name.

Nor fetch, to take ...

Matthew Arnold

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 play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the school-room windows; but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!
That word, gloom, to my mind
Brings thee back, in the light
Of thy radiant vigour, again;
In the gloom of November we pass'd
Days not dark at thy side;
Seasons impair'd not the ray
Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear.
Such thou wast! and I stand
In the autumn e...

Matthew Arnold

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.

Is it to feel our strength,
Not our bloom only, but our strength, decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were...

Matthew Arnold

Resignation

To die be given us, or attain!
Fierce work it were, to do again.
So pilgrims, bound for Mecca, prayd
At burning noon: so warriors said,
Scarfd with the cross, who watchd the miles
Of dust that wreathd their struggling files
Down Lydian mountains: so, when snows
Round Alpine summits eddying rose,
The Goth, bound Rome-wards: so the Hun,
Crouchd on his saddle, when the sun
Went lurid down oer flooded plains
Through which the groaning Danube strains
To the drear Euxine: so pray all,
Whom labours, self-ordaind, enthrall;
Because they to themselves propose
On this side the all-common close
A goal which, gaind, may give repose.
So pray they: and to stand again
Where they stood once, to them were pain;
Pain to thread back and to renew
Past ...

Matthew Arnold