Love, Not Duty

Thought may well be ever ranging,
And opinion ever changing,
Task-work be, though ill begun,
Dealt with by experience better;
By the law and by the letter
Duty done is duty done
Do it, Time is on the wing!

Hearts, tis quite another thing,
Must or once for all be given,
Or must not at all be given;
Hearts, tis quite another thing!

To bestow the soul away
Is an idle duty-play!
Why, to trust a life-long bliss
To caprices of a day,
Scarce were more depraved than this!

Men and maidens, see you mind it;
Show of love, whereer you find it,
Look if duty lurk behind it!
Duty-fancies, urging on
Whither love had never gone!

Loving if the answering breast
Seem not to be thus possessed,
Still in hoping have a care;
If it do, beware, beware!
But if in yourself you find it,
Above all things mind it, mind it!

Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough was born on January 1, 1819, in Liverpool, England. He was a prominent Victorian poet known for his thoughtful and somewhat unconventional works. Clough was educated at Rugby School and later at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became closely associated with the intellectual reformist circles of the time. His poetry often explored themes of doubt, faith, and societal conventions. Despite his relatively short life, Clough made a significant impact on English literature and remains a respected figure of the Victorian literary scene. He passed away on November 13, 1861.

Arthur Hugh Clough

Seven Sonnets on the Thought of Death 1

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

Alcaics

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

The Hidden Love

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

Perchè pensa? Pensando s invecchia.

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

English

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Duty

Duty thats to say, complying,
With whateers expected here;
On your unknown cousins dying,
Straight be ready with the tear;
Upon etiquette relying,
Unto usage nought denying,
Lend your waist to be embraced,
Blush not even, never fear;
Claims of kith and kin connection,
Claims of manners honour still,
Ready money of affection
Pay, whoever drew the bill.
With the form conforming duly,
Senseless what it meaneth truly,
Go to church the world require you,
To balls the world require you too,
And marry papa and mamma desire you,
And your sisters and schoolfellows do.
Duty tis to take on trust
What things are good, and right, and just;
And whether indeed they be or be not,
Try not, test not, feel not, see not:
Tis walk and dance, sit...

Arthur Hugh Clough

?ò ???ó? (Greek Poems - Poems and Prose Remains, Vol II)

I have seen higher holier things than these,
And therefore must to these refuse my heart,
Yet am I panting for a little ease;
Ill take, and so depart.

Ah, hold! the heart is prone to fall away,
Her high and cherished visions to forget,
And if thou takest, how wilt thou repay
So vast, so dread a debt?

How will the heart, which now thou trustest, then
Corrupt, yet in corruption mindful yet,
Turn with sharp stings upon itself! Again,
Bethink thee of the debt!

Hast thou seen higher, holier things than these,
And therefore must to these thy heart refuse?
With the true best, alack, how ill agrees
That best that thou wouldst choose!

The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven above;
Do thou, as best thou mayst, thy duty do
Amid the things...

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Clergymans First Tale

Love is fellow-service.


A youth and maid upon a summer night
Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light,
Edmund and Emma, let their names be these,
Among the shrubs within the circling trees,
Joined in a game with boys and girls at play:
For games perhaps too old a little they;
In April she her eighteenth year begun,
And twenty he, and near to twenty-one.
A game it was of running and of noise;
He as a boy, with other girls and boys
(Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun;
And when her turn, she marked not, came to run,
Emma, he called, then knew that he was wrong,
Knew that her name to him did not belong.
Her look and manner proved his feeling true,
A child no more, her womanhood she knew;
Half was the colour mounted on her fa...

Arthur Hugh Clough

Give All To Love

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,--
Nothing refuse.

'T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,--
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,--
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of th...

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Duty surviving Self-Love

The only sure friend of declining life

A Soliloquy



Unchanged within, to see all changed without,
Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret?
Then only might'st thou feel a just regret,
Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,
While, and on whom, thou may'st, shine on! nor heed
Whether the object by reflected light
Return thy radiance or absorb it quite:
And tho' thou notest from thy safe recess
Old Friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air,
Love them for what they are ; nor love them less,
Because to thee they are not what they were

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Seven Sonnets on the Thought of Death 1

I

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show,
Having performed some function, should forego
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural. But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything, whose sole office was to exist,
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb
Of Nature than to our unworthy view
She grants for a possession, may be true:
The cycle of the birthplace and ...

Arthur Hugh Clough