Some future day when what is now is not

Some future day when what is now is not,
When all old faults and follies are forgot,
And thoughts of difference passed like dreams away,
Well meet again, upon some future day.

When all that hindered, all that vexed our love,
As tall rank weeds will climb the blade above,
When all but it has yielded to decay,
Well meet again upon some future day.

When we have proved, each on his course alone,
The wider world, and learnt whats now unknown,
Have made life clear, and worked out each a way,
Well meet again, we shall have much to say.

With happier mood, and feelings born anew,
Our boyhoods bygone fancies well review,
Talk oer old talks, play as we used to play,
And meet again, on many a future day.

Some day, which oft our hearts shall yearn to see,
In some far year, though distant yet to be,
Shall we indeed, ye winds and waters, say!
Meet yet again, upon some future day?

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

Bethesda

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

Life is Struggle

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

A London Idyll

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

Green fields of England! wheresoeer

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

English

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Parting

O tell me, friends, while yet we part,
And heart can yet be heard of heart,
O tell me then, for what is it
Our early plan of life we quit;
From all our old intentions range,
And why does all so wholly change?
O tell me, friends, while yet we part!

O tell me, friends, while yet we part,
The rays that from the centre start
Within the orb of one warm sun,
Unless I err, have once begun,
Why is it thus they still diverge?
And whither tends the course they urge?
O tell me, friends, while yet we part!

O tell me, friends, while yet ye hear,
May it not be, some coming year,
These ancient paths that here divide
Shall yet again run side by side,
And you from there, and I from here,
All on a sudden reappear?
O tell me, friends, while yet ye...

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Cold Comfort

Say, will it, when our hairs are grey,
And wintry suns half light the day,
Which cheering hope and strengthening trust
Have left, departed, turned to dust,
Say, will it soothe lone years to extract
From fitful shows with sense exact
Their sad residuum, small, of fact?
Will trembling nerves their solace find
In plain conclusions of the mind?
Or errant fancies fond, that still
To fretful motions prompt the will,
Repose upon effect and cause,
And action of unvarying laws,
And human lifes familiar doom,
And on the all-concluding tomb.

Or were it to our kind and race,
And our instructed selves, disgrace
To wander then once more in you,
Green fields, beneath the pleasant blue;
To dream as we were used to dream,
And let things be whateer t...

Arthur Hugh Clough

The mighty ocean rolls and raves

The mighty ocean rolls and raves,
To part us with its angry waves;
But arch on arch from shore to shore,
In a vast fabric reaching oer,

With careful labours daily wrought
By steady hope and tender thought,
The wide and weltering waste above,
Our hearts have bridged it with their love.

There fond anticipations fly
To rear the growing structure high;
Dear memories upon either side
Combine to make it large and wide.

There, happy fancies day by day,
New courses sedulously lay;
There soft solicitudes, sweet fears,
And doubts accumulate, and tears.

While the pure purpose of the soul,
To form of many parts a whole,
To make them strong and hold them true,
From end to end, is carried through.

Then when the waters war b...

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

A London Idyll

On grass, on gravel, in the sun,
Or now beneath the shade,
They went, in pleasant Kensington,
A prentice and a maid.

That Sunday mornings April glow,
How should it not impart
A stir about the veins that flow
To feed the youthful heart.

Ah! years may come, and years may bring
The truth that is not bliss,
But will they bring another thing
That can compare with this?

I read it in that arm she lays
So soft on his; her mien,
Her step, her very gown betrays
(What in her eyes were seen)
That not in vain the young buds round,
The cawing birds above,
The air, the incense of the ground,
Are whispering, breathing love.

Ah I years may come, &c.

To inclination, young and blind,
So perfect, as they lent,
...

Arthur Hugh Clough

And Doth Not A Meeting Like This.

And doth not a meeting like this make amends,
    For all the long years I've been wandering away--
To see thus around me my youth's early friends,
    As smiling and kind as in that happy day?
Tho' haply o'er some of your brows, as o'er mine,
    The snow-fall of time may be stealing--what then?
Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine,
    We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again.

What softened remembrances come o'er the heart,
    In gazing on those we've been lost to so long!
The sorrows, the joys, of which once they were part,
    Still round them, like visions of yesterday, throng,
As letters some hand hath invisibly traced,
    When held to the flame will steal out on the sight,
So many a feeling, that long seemed effaced,
    The warmth of...

Thomas Moore