British Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge ...

I do not ask the tints that fill The gate of day 'twixt hill and hill; I ask not for the hues that fleet Above the distant peaks; my feet Are on a poplar-bordered road, Where with a saddle and a load A donkey, old and ashen-gray, Reluctant works his dusty way. Before him, still with might and main Pulling his rope, the rustic rein, A girl before both him and me, Frequent she turns and lets me see, Unconscious, lets me scan and trace The sunny darkness of her face And outlines full of southern grace.

Following I notice, yet and yet, Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set, And black, and blacker e'en than jet, The escaping hair that scantly showed, Since o'er it in the country mode, For winter warmth and summer shade, The lap of scarlet cloth is laid. And then, back-falling from the head, A crimson kerchief overspread Her jacket blue; thence passing down, A skirt of darkest yellow-brown, Coarse stuff, allowing to the view The smooth limb to the woollen shoe. But who here's some one following

too,-

A priest, and reading at his book!
Read on, O priest, and do not look;
Consider, she is but a child,—
Yet might your fancy be beguiled.
Read on, O priest, and pass and go!
But see, succeeding in a row,
Two, three, and four, a motley train,
Musicians wandering back to Spain;
With fiddle and with tambourine,
A man with women following seen.
What dresses, ribbon ends, and flowers!
And, sight to wonder at for hours,—
The man,--to Phillip has he sat ?--
With butterfly-like velvet hat;
One dame his big bassoon conveys,
On one his gentle arm he lays;
They stop, and look, and something say,
And to España" ask the way.

But while I speak, and point them

COME, POET, COME!

COME, Poet, come!

A thousand laborers ply their task,
And what it tends to scarcely ask,
And trembling thinkers on the brink
Shiver, and know not how to think.
To tell the purport of their pain,
And what our silly joys contain;
In lasting lineaments portray
The substance of the shadowy day;
Our real and inner deeds rehearse,
And make our meaning clear in verse:
Come, Poet, come! for but in vain
We do the work or feel the pain,
And gather up the seeming gain,
Unless before the end thou come
To take, ere they are lost, their sum.

Come, Poet, come!

To give an utterance to the dumb,
And make vain babblers silent, come;
A thousand dupes point here and there,
Bewildered by the show and glare;

And wise men half have learned to doubt

Whether we are not best without.
Come, Poet; both but wait to see
Their error proved to them in thee.

Come, Poet, come!

In vain I seem to call. And yet
Think not the living times forget.
Ages of heroes fought and fell
That Homer in the end might tell;
O'er grovelling generations past
Upstood the Doric fane at last;
And countless hearts on countless years
Had wasted thoughts, and hopes, and
fears,

Rude laughter and unmeaning tears,
Ere England Shakespeare saw, or Rome
The pure perfection of her dome.
Others, I doubt not, if not we,
The issue of our toils shall see;
Young children gather as their own
The harvest that the dead had sown,
The dead forgotten and unknown.

THE HIDDEN LOVE

1862.

O LET me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown;

No witness to my vision call,
Beholding, unbeheld of all;

And worship Thee, with Thee withdrawn apart,

Whoe'er, Whate'er Thou art,

Within the closest veil of mine own inmost heart.

What is it then to me

If others are inquisitive to see?

Why should I quit my place to go and ask

If other men are working at their task?
Leave my own buried roots to go
And see that brother plants shall grow;
And turn away from Thee, O Thou most
Holy Light

To look if other orbs their orbits keep aright,

Around their proper sun,

Deserting Thee, and being undone.

O let me love my love unto myself alone, And know my knowledge to the world unknown;

And worship Thee, O hid One, O much sought,

As but man can or ought, Within the abstracted'st shrine of my least breathed on thought.

Better it were, thou sayest, to consent; Feast while we may, and live ere life be

ARNOLD

LIST OF REFERENCES

EDITIONS

Complete Works, 14 volumes; Poetical Works, 3 volumes; Poetical Works, Globe Edition, 1 volume; Selected Poems (Golden Treasury Series), The Macmillan Co. Letters, 2 volumes, see below.

BIOGRAPHY

* Letters of Matthew Arnold, edited by G. W. E. Russell, 2 volumes, 1895. FITCH (Joshua), Thomas and Matthew Arnold (Great Educators Series). THORNE (W. H.), Life of Matthew Arnold, 1887. *GARNETT (R.), Arnold, in the Dictionary of National Biography. SAINTSBURY (George), Life of Matthew Arnold (Modern English Writers), 1899. PAUL (H. W.), Matthew Arnold (English Men of Letters Series), 1902. RUSSELL (G. W. E.), Matthew Arnold (Literary Lives), 1904.

REMINISCENCES AND EARLY CRITICISM

FARRAR (F. W.), Men I Have Known. CLOUGH (A. H.), Prose Remains (originally in the North American Review, July, 1853). ROSCOE (W. C), Poems and Essays, Vol. II; The Classical School of English Poetry, Matthew Arnold, 1859. * SWINBURNE, Essays and Studies: Matthew Arnold's New Poems (Originally in the Fortnightly Review, October, 1867). FORMAN (H. B.), Our Living Poets: Matthew Arnold (Originally in Tinsley's Magazine, September, 1868). AUSTIN (Alfred), The Poetry of the Period (Originally in Temple Bar, August and September, 1869). WHIPPLE (E. P.), Recollections: Matthew Arnold, 1887.

LATER CRITICISM

BIRRELL (Augustine), Res Judicatæ; Papers and Essays. BURROUGHS (John), The Light of Day: Spiritual Insight of Matthew Arnold. DowDEN (Edward), Transcripts and Studies. GARNETT (Richard), Essays of an Ex-Librarian. * GATES (L. E.), Three Studies in Literature. GATES (L. E.), Studies and Appreciations: The Return to Conventional Life. HARRISON (Frederic), The Choice of Books. HARRISON (Frederic),

Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates. HENLEY (W. E.), Views and Reviews. HUDSON (W. H.), Studies in Interpretation. *HUTTON (R. H.), Literary Essays. Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith. MUSTARD (W. P.), Homeric Echoes in Matthew Arnold's Balder. NENCIONI (E.), Letteratura inglese. OLIPHANT (Margaret), Victorian Age of English Literature. PAUL (H. W.), Men and Letters: Matthew Arnold's Letters. SAINTSBURY (George), Corrected Impressions. * STEDMAN (E. C.), Victorian Poets. STEPHEN (Leslie), Studies of a Biographer. TRAILL (H. D.), New Fiction and Other Essays on Literary Subjects. WHITE (G.), Matthew Arnold and the Spirit of the Age.* WOODBERRY (G. E.), Makers of Literature.

CHENEY (J. V.), The Golden Guess. DAWSON (W. H.), Matthew Arnold and His Relation to the Thought of Our Time. DAWSON (W. J.), Makers of English Poetry. DIXON (W. M.), English Poetry: Blake to Browning. DUFF (M. E. G.), Out of the Past. GALTON (A.), Urbana Scripta. * GALTON (A.), Two Essays on Matthew Arnold, with Some of His Letters to the Author. MACARTHUR (Henry), Realism and Romance. NADAL (E. S.), Essays at Home and Elsewhere. SELKIRK (J. B.), Ethics and Esthetics of Modern Poetry: Modern Creeds and Modern Poetry. SHARP (Amy), Victorian Poets. STEARNS (F. P.), Sketches from Concord and Appledore. SWANWICK (A.), Poets the Interpreters of Their Age.

TRIBUTES IN VERSE

BOURDILLON (F. W.), Sursum Corda: To Matthew Arnold in America. SHAIRP (J. C.), Glen d'Esseray and Other Poems: Balliol Scholars, 18401843. TRUMAN (Joseph), Afterthoughts: Laleham, a Poem.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

*SMART (Thomas B.), The Bibliography of Matthew Arnold, 1892.

ADDENDA, 1999

Criticism: * BROOKE (S. A.), Four Victorian Poets, 1908. DIXON (J. M.), in Modern Poets and Christian Teaching, Vol. II, 1906. * DowDEN (Edward), in Chambers's New Cyclopædia of English Literature, Vol. III, new edition, 1904. FULLER (Edward), Arnold, Newman, and Rossetti; in the Critic, Sept., 1904. GARNETT (R.), Matthew Arnold; in the Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement, Vol. III, 1903. HUTTON (R. H.), Brief Literary Criticisms, 1906 (five essays). MACKIE (Alexander), Nature Knowledge in Modern Poets, 1906. PAYNE (W. M.), The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, 1907. ROBERTSON (J. M.), Modern Humanists, 1891. SIDGWICK (Henry), Miscellaneous Essays and Addresses, 1905. *WARREN (T. Herbert), Essays of Poets and Poetry, Ancient and Modern, 1909.

Tributes in Verse: FANSHAWE (Reginald), Corydon; An Elegy in Memory of Matthew Arnold and Oxford, 1906. ROBINSON (E. A.), The Children of the Night: For Some Poems of Matthew Arnold.

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