Matthew Arnold

"France, fam'd in all great arts, in none supreme."

"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 horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away. This way, this way!"

"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 rang’d all round Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground."

"Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye. When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday?"

"Children dear, was it yesterday (Call yet once) that she went away?"

"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."

"But, ah! she gave me never a look, For her eyes were sealed to the holy book. Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door. Come away, children, call no more! Come away, come down, call no more!"

"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 for ever The kings of the sea.""

"Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul."

"No deep the Poet sees, but wide."

"The World in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy."

"Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquer’d Fate."

"Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot, In action’s dizzying eddy whirl’d, The something that infects the world."

"Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece, Long since, saw Byron’s struggle cease."

"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."

"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 spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth."

"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?"

"Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole."

"The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint- nor sophist-led, but be a man."

"Thou hast no right to bliss."

"We do not what we ought, What we ought not, we do, And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through; But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers."

"Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away."

"So, loath to suffer mute. We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear."

"Is it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanc’d true friends, and beat down baffling foes?"

"Far, far from here, The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay Among the green Illyrian hills; ... And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes, Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore, In breathless quiet, after all their ills."

"Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair!"

"Not here, O Apollo Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea."

"’Tis Apollo comes leading His choir, the Nine. —The leader is fairest, But all are divine."