Matthew Arnold

“ The bleak, stern hour,
Whose severe moments
I would annihilate,
Is pass'd by others
In warmth, light, joy.
Time, so complain'd or,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality,
Brings round to all men
Some undimm'd hours. ”

“ Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.
Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still. ”

“ Only—but this is rare—
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd—
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. ”

“ And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well—but 'tis not true! ”

“ For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
⁠Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
⁠Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
⁠Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,
⁠Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.
⁠O life unlike to ours!
⁠Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
⁠Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
⁠And each half lives a hundred different lives ”

“ But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us—to know
Whence our lives come and where they go. ”

“ And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here
⁠In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,
⁠Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass
⁠Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames,
⁠To bathe in the abandon' d lasher pass,
⁠Have often pass'd thee near
⁠Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown ”