Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnoldwas an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 December 1822
high quick soon thou wilt
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? / Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on.
life-is obscure
I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.
forth lost
Friends who set forth at our side, / Falter, are lost in the storm. / We, we only, are left!
english-poet enjoyed light lived small
It is so small a think to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.
gives light notion perverse philistine resistance suits
Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children; and therein it specially suits our middle-class.
expressive eyes lovely
Eyes too expressive to be blue, / Too lovely to be grey.
breaks cliff haunts meet
Not here, O Apollo! / Are haunts meet for thee. / But, where Helicon breaks down / In cliff to the sea.
happy outside rage sound storms took troubled
He went; his piping took a troubled sound / Of storms that rage outside our happy ground.
nursing
Still nursing the unconquerable hope, / Still clutching the inviolable shade.
enjoyed light lived small
Is it so small a thing / To have enjoyed the sun, / To have lived light in the spring, / To have loved, to have thought, to have done?
armies clash confused ignorant night plain struggle swept
And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night
hum land low majestic mist river solitary
But the majestic river floated on, / Out of the mist and hum of that low land, / Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, / Rejoicing, through the hushed Chorasmian waste, / Under the solitary moon.
bustle pole possess sights soul
And see all sights from pole to pole, / And glance, and nod, and bustle by; / And never once possess our soul / Before we die.
itself society
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace.