Source of book: I own this
It has been over a dozen years since I read any Arnold. At the time, I noted that I felt his version of Victorian idealism and disillusionment (he shows both) hadn’t worn that well, and there were definitely a few poems that reminded me of that. However, I read his early poems at the time, and perhaps didn’t get an entirely representative selection.
I don’t remember exactly which library edition I read, but now I have my own Wordsworth Poetry Library edition, which should contain the complete poems.
One thing I did discover with this edition is that, unlike modern poets, Arnold released his poems in collections that were largely duplicative. He would just add a few to some of his older ones, and sell a new edition. This means that to read any particular release, except for a few, you have to jump around in the book.
In this case, I read the collection sold as Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, published in 1852, and containing several poems that were repeated in other collections.
The title poem is by far the longest, at over 460 lines, and is in the rough form of a play. Despite the form, it is mostly sermonizing on a variety philosophical themes, followed by the disillusioned title character throwing himself dramatically into the volcano.
Here are a few of the most interesting passages. In the first, Empedocles rejects the idea of propitiating the gods.
Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven.
Man has a mind with which to play his safety;
Know that, and help thyself.
And this one:
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.
These hundred doctors try
To preach thee to thy school.
We have the truth! they cry.
And yet their oracle,
Trumpet it as they will, is but the same as thine.
There is also another long poem, a retelling of the legend of Tristrum and Iseult, which is the earliest of what became the Arthur stories. You might know the story under one of its other spellings, Tristan and Isolde, Wagner’s haunting opera based on the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fktwPGCR7Yw
I won’t quote from it, but is a fine piece of work, much like Tennyson’s retelling of the Arthur stories in poetry. Well worth reading.
I also should mention my favorite poem of the collection, “Youth’s Agitation,” which I won’t reproduce here, because I already mentioned it in my previous post on Arnold.
There are some other short poems I liked. This one, for example.
Despondency
The thoughts that rain their steady glow
Like stars on life’s cold sea,
Which others know, or say they know -
They never shone for me.
Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit’s sky,
But they will not remain.
They light me once, they hurry by,
And never come again.
And this one as well:
Revolutions
Before Man parted for this earthly strand,
While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood,
God put a heap of letters in his hand,
And bade him make with them what word he could.
And Man has turn’d them many times: made Greece,
Rome, England, France: - yes, nor in vain essay’d
Way after way, changes that never cease.
The letters have combin’d: something was made.
But ah, an inextinguishable sense
Haunts him that he has not made what he should.
That he has still, though old, to recommence,
Since he has not yet found the word God would.
And Empire after Empire, at their height
Of sway, have felt this boding sense come on.
Have felt their huge frames not constructed right,
And droop’d, and slowly died upon their throne.
One day, thou say’st, there will at last appear
The word, the order, which God meant should be. -
Ah, we shall know that well when it comes near:
The band will quit Man’s heart: he will breathe free.
It is a fun counterpart to Joseph Conrad’s later riff on the failures of Empire - over 50 years before Conrad’s book, Arnold already saw the failure of all of the good intentions.
There are a number of poems too long to quote in full that have some excellent lines. This one, from “The Buried Life,” caught my eye.
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There arises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life,
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart that beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our thoughts come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas, none ever mines:
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown on each talent and power,
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves;
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress’d.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well - but ‘tis not true.
The collection closes with a sequence of poems about the nature of man, the nature of nature, progress, the future, and so on. The opening of “The Future” is excellent, although I felt it fell flat at the end.
A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born on a ship
On the breast of the River of Time.
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.
As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes
Where the snowy mountainous pass
Echoing the screams of the eagles
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream:
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain:
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea:
As is the world on the banks
So is the mind of man.
It was good to return to Arnold again, even if I do find other Victorians - Tennyson, the Brownings - to be more to my own preference. At his best, he has some great lyrics, and his skill with words never ceases to be tasty.
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