Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose

MATTHEW ARNOLD

(1822-1888)

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN*

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses1 play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go-
Call once yet!

In a voice that she will know:
"Margaret! Margaret!"

Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;
Children's voices, wild with pain-
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!

"Mother dear, we cannot stay!
The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down; ('all no more!

One last look at the white-walled town,
And the little gray church on the windy shore,

Then come down!

She will not come though you call all day; Come away, come away!

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!'”

She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone? "The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan; Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say;

Come!" I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-walled

town;

Children dear, was it yesterday
We heard the sweet bells over the bay?
In the caverns where we lay,
Through the surf and through the swell,
The far-off sound of a silver bell?
Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,

See

1 The breakers.

* This poem is based on a legend which is found in the literature of various nations. Eng. Lit., p. 311.

Come away, come down, call no more!

Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the spindle drops from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

TO A FRIEND*

Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my mind?

He much, the old man, who, clearest-souled of

men,

Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, She steals to the window, and looks at the And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.

sand,

And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;

And anon there breaks a sigh,

And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh;

Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis

100 Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son
('leared Rome of what most shamed him. But
be his

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away children;
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.

We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.
Singing: "Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!

And alone dwell forever

The kings of the sea."

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring tides are low;

When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starred with broom,
And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanched sands a gloom;
Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hillside-
And then come back down.

The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet (Colonus, and its child.

SHAKESPEARE

110 Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask-Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-

120

130

place,

Spares but the cloudy border of his base
To the foiled searching of mortality;
And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams
know,

Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honoured, self

secure,

Didst tread on earth unguessed at.-Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which
bow,

Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

* This sonnet gives expression to Arnold's steady reliance, for mental and moral support, upon the great poets and philosophers-his constant recourse to "the best that is known and thought in the world." The three "props" mentioned here are Homer, the blind bard whom the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor claimed as her son; Epictetus, the lame philosopher who had been a slave, and who, when Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome, went to Nicopolis in Greece and taught his Stole principles to Arrian; and Sophocles, the Athenian dramatist, author of Edipus at Colonus and other tragedies. Arnold explains the third line by pointing out that the name Europe means "the wide prospect," and Asia probably means "marshy." The twelfth line has passed into familiar quotation.

AUSTERITY OF POETRY

That son of Italy who tried to blow,1
Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sat with his bride to see a public show.
Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow
Youth like a star; and what to youth belong-
Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong.
A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo,
'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she
lay!

Shuddering, they drew her garments off-and found

A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin. Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young,

gay,

Radiant, adorned outside; a hidden ground Of thought and of austerity within.

MEMORIAL VERSES
APRIL, 1850

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remained to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb-

We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bowed our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;

And yet with reverential awe

We watched the fount of fiery life

Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said:
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He looked on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life-
He said: The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!

1 Jacopone da Todi, who was, says Gaspary, a "true type of the mediaeval Christian ascetic."

According to the legend, he was turned by the

And Wordsworth!-Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world conveyed,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime

Had fallen-on this iron time

Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth

On the cool flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hil's were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world.

Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear-
But who, ah! who, will make us feel?
The cloud of mortal destiny,
Others will front it fearlessly-

But who, like him, will put it by?

Keep fresh the grass upon his grave,
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.

SELF-DEPENDENCE

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

incident which Arnold relates from a life of gayety to one of rigorous self-imposed pen

ances.

1 The stream which flows past the churchyard of Grasmere where Wordsworth is buried,

What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretched out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.3

I, on men's impious uproar hurled,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."

O air-born voice! long since, severely clear, A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear: "Resolve to be thyself; and know that he, Who finds himself, loses his misery!"

The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel with others give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live.

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS2

REQUIESCAT+

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes;

Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass, What endless, active life is here!

Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.

Her cabined, ample spirit,

It fluttered and failed for breath.

To-night it doth inherit

The vasty hall of death.

2 An extensive London park.

3 Arnold was born at Laleham in the Thames val
ley, and grew up amid country scenes,
4 "May she rest."

SOHRAB AND RUSTUM*

Tossing and wakeful, and I come to thee. For so did King Afrasiab bid me seek And the first gray of morning filled the east, Thy counsel, and to heed thee as thy son, And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream.5 In Samarcand, before the army marched; But all the Tartar camp along the stream And I will tell thee what my heart desires. Was hushed, and still the men were plunged in Thou know'st if, since from Ader-baijans first

sleep;

The men of former times had crowned the top 20
With a clay fort; but that was fallen, and now
The Tartars built there Peran-Wisa's tent,

A dome of laths, and o'er it felts were spread.
And Sohrab came there, and went in, and stood
Upon the thick piled carpets in the tent,
And found the old man sleeping on his bed
Of rugs and felts, and near him lay his arms.
And Peran-Wisa heard him, though the step
Was dulled; for he slept light, an old man's

sleep;

And he rose quickly on one arm, and said:- 30 "Who art thou? for it is not yet clear dawn. Speak! is there news, or any night alarm?"

But Sohrab came to the bedside, and said:"Thou know 'st me, Peran-Wisa! it is I. The sun is not yet risen, and the foe

Sleep; but I sleep not; all night long I lie

5 Now the Amu-Daria, flowing from thea plateau

of Pamir, in central Asia, to the Aral 6 A Turanian chieftain.

7 From "pile"-fur, or hair-like nap.

* Founded on a story in the Persian epic, Shah Nameh, or "Book of Kings." Rustum is the great legendary warrior-hero of Iran, or Persia. In the Turanian, or Tartar land, which

field,

His not unworthy, not inglorious son.
So I long hoped, but him I never find.
Come then, hear now, and grant me what I ask.
Let the two armies rest to-day; but I
Will challenge forth the bravest Persian lords
To meet me, man to man; if I prevail,
Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall-
Old man, the dead need no one, claim no kin.
Dim is the rumour of a common fight,
Where host meets host, and many names are
sunk;

"O Sohrab, an unquiet heart is thine!
Canst thou not rest among the Tartar chiefs,
And share the battle's common chance with us
Who love thee, but must press for ever first,
In single fight incurring single risk,

To find a father thou hast never seen?

That were far best, my son, to stay with us
Unmurmuring; in our tents, while it is war,
And when 't is truce, then in Afrasiab's towns.
But, if this one desire indeed rules all,

To seck out Rustum-seek him not through
fight!

Seek him in peace, and carry to his arms,
O Sohrab, carry an unwounded son!
But far hence seek him, for he is not here.
For now it is not as when I was young,
When Rustum was in front of every fray; 80
But now he keeps apart, and sits at home,
In Seistan, with Zal, his father old.

is ruled over by Afrasiab, an enemy of the Per-Whether that his own mighty strength at last

sians, Rustum's son Sohrab has grown up without ever having seen his father; nor does the father know of the existence of his son, having been told that the child born to him was a girl. The rest of the tragic tale may be left to tell itself in the simple and dignified language which Arnold, in professed imitation of the Homeric poems, has chosen. See Eng. Lit., p. 312.

Feels the abhorred approaches of old age,
Or in some quarrel with the Persian King.
There go! -Thou wilt not? Yet my heart fore-

bodes

8 A northerly province of Persia.

9 Three syllables, Se-is-tan; in eastern Persia.

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