(7) MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

 

“But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.”

 

A passage I’m fond of quoting from Arnold’s finest and best known poem, Dover Beach, for desperate last stands or holding one defensive line after another – I did it for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire because of course I did. All roads lead to Rome.

Anyway, Matthew Arnold “was an English poet, essayist, and critic from the Victorian era” – “considered one of the great Victorian poets…and one of the Victorian sages”, the latter for his essays on literary criticism and other topics.

Famously melancholic and pessimistic, particularly with respect to the decline of religious faith – that recurring source of angst and despair for Victorian poets or writers. Indeed, that melancholy, long, withdrawing roar retreating in Dover Beach is the tide going out for “the sea of faith” – that “was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shore”.

Arguably the most melancholic Victorian poet – although Alfred Lord Tennyson would give him a run for his money with Tennyson’s In Memoriam. Shortly after his death, Robert Louis Stevenson quipped about his bleak melancholy – “Poor Matt. He’s gone to heaven, no doubt – but he won’t like God”.

 

“Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)