Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christ’s then open grave.
Turning sadly away he says:
Now he is dead! Far hence he lies
In the lone Syrian town,
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down?
At last we seem to find this scholar and poet, Christian born and
Christian bred, sinking into the pantheism of heathenism, such as our
missionaries confront in India.
Myriads who live, who have lived,
What are we all but a mood,
A single mood, of the life
Of the Being in whom we exist,
Who alone is all things in one?
Through all Mr. Arnold’s utterances there seems a certain air of
condescension. To the masses, “the un-Hellenic public,” he seems to look
from his own “islet” and say, “Cultivate your own spirit;” “Cherish light
and sweetness,” and to add, “Look at me and aspire to your own best
self.” This looks like a delicate self-worship, such as was in Goethe,
and thither “self-culture” easily leads.
In Mr. Arnold as poet one finds enough to admire and enjoy. His first
volume of poems was given anonymously to the world in 1849. It made
some stir. We thought another of the immortals was among us, and so it
proved. He followed in song the same who were his masters in culture,
striving, “Wordsworth’s sweet calm, and Goethe’s wide and luminous view
to gain.” He took up poetry seriously, for he thought that “poetry is the
impassioned expression in the countenance of all science,” “the breath
and finer spirit of all knowledge.” To him poetry is no idle warbling,
but an intense criticism of life in which he works from sense of duty.
In all his poems one finds dignity and grace of spirit, something of
Goethe’s spiritual unrest, and of Wordsworth’s healing balm found in
communion with nature.
Thus, after Rustum in desperate fight has unknowingly slain his son
Sohrab, (who has disclosed himself in his last moments) with how quiet
dignity does the Oxus move on, leaving on its bank Sohrab in his gore,
and Rustum in his hot agony and blinding tears!
But the majestic river floated on
Out of the mist and hum of that low land
Into the frosted starlight, and there moved
Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste
Under the solitary moon, till at last
The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge and shine upon the Aral sea.
He comes to nature, not to bring anything, but to seek rest and
refreshment. Byron pours out upon nature, as in Childe Harold, the
“sparkling gloom” of his own spirit. Coleridge, as in the Hymn at
Chamouni, fills nature with his own lofty rapture. Arnold’s poems all
show how he asks of nature, not pleasure or exaltation—only relief. By
the lake he says:
How sweet to feel, on the boon air,
All our unquiet pulses cease!
In his Summer Night,
The calm moonlight seems to say,
Hast thou, then, still the old, unquiet breast?