Arthur Hugh Clough

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, where’er 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 car...

A youth was I. An elder friend with me,
’Twas in September o’er the autumnal sea
We went; the wide Atlantic ocean o’er
Two amongst many the strong steamer bore.
Delight it was to feel that wondrous force
That held us steady to our purposed course,
The burning resolute victorious will
’Gainst winds and waves that strive unwavering still.
Delight it was with each returning day.
To learn the ship had won upon her way
Her sum of miles, delight were mornings grey
And gorgeous eves, nor was it less delight,
On each more temperate and favouring night,
Friend with familiar or with new-found friend,
To pace the deck, and o’er the bulwarks bend,
And the night watches in long converse spend;
While still new subjects and new thoughts arise
Amidst the silence of the s...

Beside me, in the car, she sat,
She spake not, no, nor looked to me
From her to me, from me to her,
What passed so subtly, stealthily?
As rose to rose that by it blows
Its interchanged aroma flings;
Or wake to sound of one sweet note
The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this! but this,
That influent as within me dwelt
Her life, mine too within her breast,
Her brain, her every limb she felt
We sat; while o’er and in us, more
And more, a power unknown prevailed,
Inhaling, and inhaled, and still
’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this; and passed;
I passed; and know not to this day
If gold or jet her girlish hair,
If black, or brown, or lucid-grey
Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance
...

In controversial foul impureness
The peace that is thy light to thee
Quench not: in faith and inner sureness
Possess thy soul and let it be.

No violence, perverse, persistent,
What cannot be can bring to be;
No zeal what is make more existent,
And strife but blinds the eyes that see.

What though in blood their souls embruing,
The great, the good, and wise they curse,
Still sinning, what they know not doing;
Stand still, forbear, nor make it worse.

By curses, by denunciation,
The coming fate they cannot stay;
Nor thou, by fiery indignation,
Though just, accelerate the day.

O ship, ship, ship,
That travellest over the sea,
What are the tidings, I pray thee,
Thou bearest hither to me?

Are they tidings of comfort and joy,
That shall make me seem to see
The sweet lips softly moving
And whispering love to me?

Or are they of trouble and grief,
Estrangement, sorrow, and doubt,
To turn into torture my hopes,
And drive me from Paradise out?

O ship, ship, ship,
That comest over the sea,
Whatever it be thou bringest,
Come quickly with it to me.

It may be true
That while we walk the troublous tossing sea,
That when we see the o’ertopping waves advance,
And when we feel our feet beneath us sink,
There are who walk beside us; and the cry
That rises so spontaneous to the lips,
The ‘Help us or we perish,’ is not nought,
An evanescent spectrum of disease.
It may be that indeed and not in fancy,
A hand that is not ours upstays our steps,
A voice that is not ours commands the waves;
Commands the waves, and whispers in our ear,
O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?
At any rate,
That there are beings above us, I believe,
And when we lift up holy hands of prayer,
I will not say they will not give us aid.

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...

To spend uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working out in heart and brain
The problem of our being here;
To gather facts from far and near,
Upon the mind to hold them clear,
And, knowing more may yet appear,
Unto one’s latest breath to fear,
The premature result to draw
Is this the object, end and law,
And purpose of our being here?

What voice did on my spirit fall,
Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost?
‘’Tis better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all.’

The tricolor, a trampled rag
Lies, dirt and dust; the lines I track
By sentry boxes yellow-black,
Lead up to no Italian flag.

I see the Croat soldier stand
Upon the grass of your redoubts;
The eagle with his black wings flouts
The breath and beauty of your land.

Yet not in vain, although in vain,
O’ men of Brescia, on the day
Of loss past hope, I heard you say
Your welcome to the noble pain.

You say, ‘Since so it is, good bye
Sweet life, high hope; but whatsoe’er
May be, or must, no tongue shall dare
To tell, “The Lombard feared to die!”’

You said (there shall be answer ...

‘I hope it is in good plain verse,’ said my uncle, ‘none of your hurry-scurry anapæsts, as you call them, in lines which sober people read for plain heroics. Nothing is more disagreeable than to say a line over two, or, it may be, three or four times, and at last not be sure that there are not three or four ways of reading, each as good and as much intended as another. Simplex duntaxat et unum. But you young people think Horace and your uncles old fools.’

‘Certainly, my dear sir,’ said I; ‘that is, I mean, Horace and my uncle are perfectly right. Still, there is an instructed ear and an uninstructed. A rude taste for identical recurrences would exact sing-song from “Paradise Lost,” and grumble because “Il Penseroso” doesn’t run like a nursery rhyme.’ ‘Well, well,’ said my uncle, ‘sunt certi denique fines, no doubt. So commence,...

As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried;

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
By each was cleaving, side by side:

E’en so, but why the tale reveal
Of those, whom year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,
Astounded, soul from soul estranged?

At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered
Ah, neither blame, for neither willed,
Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!

To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass guides
To that, ...

O only Source of all our light and life,
Whom as our truth, our strength, we see and feel,
But whom the hours of mortal moral strife
Alone aright reveal!

Mine inmost soul, before Thee inly brought,
Thy presence owns ineffable, divine;
Chastised each rebel self-encentered thought,
My will adoreth Thine.

With eye down-dropt, if then this earthly mind
Speechless remain, or speechless e’en depart;
Nor seek to see, for what of earthly kind
Can see Thee as Thou art?

If well-assured ’tis but profanely bold
In thought’s abstractest forms to seem to see,
It dare not dare the dread communion hold
In ways unworthy Thee,

O not unowned, thou shalt unnamed forgive,
In worldly walks the prayerless heart prepare;
And if in work its life it se...

O happy mother! while the man wayworn
Sleeps by his ass and dreams of daily bread,
Wakeful and heedful for thy infant care,
O happy mother! while thy husband sleeps,
Art privileged, O blessed one, to see
Celestial strangers sharing in thy task,
And visible angels waiting on thy child.

Take, O young soul, O infant heaven-desired,
Take and fear not the cates, although of earth,
Which to thy hands celestial hands extend,
Take and fear not: such vulgar meats of life
Thy spirit lips no more must scorn to pass;
The seeming ill, contaminating joys,
Thy sense divine no more be loth to allow;
The pleasures as the pains of our strange life
Thou art engaged, self-compromised, to share.
Look up, upon thy mother’s face there sits
No sad suspicion of a lurking il...

So I went wrong,
Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o’ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o’erflowed, or hushed itself in fear
Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and, me seemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being’s depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden...

Say not, the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, things remain;

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.

Whence are ye, vague desires,
Which carry men along,
However proud and strong;
Which, having ruled to-day,
To-morrow pass away?
Whence are ye, vague desires?
Whence are ye?

Which women, yielding to,
Find still so good and true;
So true, so good to-day,
To-morrow gone away.
Whence are ye, vague desires?
Whence are ye?

From seats of bliss above,
Where angels sing of love;
From subtle airs around,
Or from the vulgar ground,
Whence are ye, vague desires?
Whence are ye?

A message from the blest,
Or bodily unrest;
A call to heavenly good,
A fever in the blood
What are ye, vague desires?
What are ye?

Which men who know you best
Are proof against the least,
And rushing on to-day,
To-mo...

My beloved, is it nothing
Though we meet not, neither can,
That I see thee, and thou me,
That we see, and see we see,
When I see I also feel thee;
Is it nothing, my beloved!

Thy luminous clear beauty
Brightens on me in my night,
I withdraw into my darkness
To allure thee into light.
About me and upon me I feel them pass and stay,
About me, deep into me, every lucid tender ray.
And thou, thou also feelest
When thou stealest
Shamefaced and half afraid
To the chamber of thy shade,
Thou in thy turn,
Thou too feelest
Something follow, something yearn,
A full orb blaze and burn.

My full orb upon thine,
As thine erst, gently smiling,
Softly wooing, sweetly wiling,
Gleamed on mine;
So mine on thine in turn
When ...

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 ...