Let the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
MATTHEW ARNOLDLet the long contention cease! / Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
MATTHEW ARNOLDKnow, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
MATTHEW ARNOLDAnd that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.
MATTHEW ARNOLDAh! two desires toss about The poet’s feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.
MATTHEW ARNOLDMen of culture are the true apostles of equality
MATTHEW ARNOLDTo thee only God granted A heart ever new: To all always open; To all always true.
MATTHEW ARNOLDFor poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
MATTHEW ARNOLDGenius is mainly an affair of energy.
MATTHEW ARNOLDNow the great winds shoreward blow Now the salt tides seaward flow Now the wild white horses play Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
MATTHEW ARNOLDThis strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims.
MATTHEW ARNOLDResolve to be thyself: and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
MATTHEW ARNOLDForce and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.
MATTHEW ARNOLDNature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away.
MATTHEW ARNOLDAll the live murmur of a summer’s day.
MATTHEW ARNOLDJoy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows Like the wave; Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men. Love tends life a little grace, A few sad smiles; and then, Both are laid in one cold place, In the grave.
MATTHEW ARNOLDTime 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?
MATTHEW ARNOLD