Matthew Arnold was a poet, cultural critic, and school inspector, best remembered for his poem, ‘Dover Beach‘. It, along with several others, solidified Arnold’s place in the history of 19th-century poetry.
‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold is dramatic monologue lamenting the loss of true Christian faith in England during the mid 1800s.
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
A quiet reflection on modern life and spiritual escape, ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’ follows a wandering figure who leaves the world behind in search of something deeper and lasting.
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
‘Growing Old’ is about the reality of aging and how ones youthful expectations will not be fulfilled as one’s body losing beauty and strength.
What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The luster of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
‘Buried Life’ by Matthew Arnold is a monologue through which a distressed speaker analyzes his complicated feelings about his own inner life.
Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
‘Lines Written in Kensington Gardens’ describes a speaker’s experience within the confines of Kensington Gardens in London, England.
In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!
‘Longing’ by Matthew Arnold is a poem directed at someone’s lover. They ask this person to visit them in their dreams since they can’t be together during the day.
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
‘Philomena’ by Matthew Arnold follows a narrator who after encountering a nightingale in the woods in England, interprets it’s calls for the sounds of mourning.
Hark! ah, the nightingale—
The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!—what pain!
‘The Forsaken Merman’ by Matthew Arnold is a melancholy poem in which the speaker, a merman, grieves the loss of his human wife. He’s left alone with their children without the woman he loves.
Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
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