Matthew Arnold

TO A PREACHER.“In harmony with Nature?” Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility,--
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,…

ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED.Because thou hast believed, the wheels of life
Stand never idle, but go always round;
Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground,
Moved only; but by genius, in the strifeOf all its chafing torrents after thaw,…

ON SEEING, IN THE COUNTRY,
HIS PICTURE OF “THE BOTTLE.”Artist, whose hand, with horror winged, hath torn
From the rank life of towns this leaf! and flung
The prodigy of full-blown crime among…

I ask not that my bed of death
From bands of greedy heirs be free;
For these besiege the latest breath
Of fortune's favoured sons, not me.I ask not each kind soul to keep…

GH the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame.
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.

В горах, где бурный Симоис рожден,
Стоял Палладий средь лесов и скал.
Герои, защищая Илион,
Не видели его, но он стоял,Стоял в сиянье солнца и луны,…

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name

Mist clogs the sunshine.
Smoky dwarf
Hem me round everywhere;
A vague

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.

FAR on its rocky knoll descried
Saint Michael’s chapel cuts the sky.
I climbed;—beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.Bright in the sunset, weird and still,…

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, prized and practised by too few,
But prized, but loved, but eminent in you,
Man’s fundamental life; if to despiseThe barren optimistic sophistries…

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow

HE
LE Down the Savoy valleys sounding, Echoing round this castle old, 'Mid the distant mountain-chalets Hark! what bell for church is toll'd? In the bright October morning Savoy's Duke had left his bride.
From the castle, past the…

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,
Along the Appian way.

The Master stood upon the mount, and taught. He saw a fire in his disciples’ eyes; ‘The old law’, they said, ‘is wholly come to naught!
Behold the new world rise!’
‘Was it’, the Lord then said, ‘with scorn ye saw
The old law observed…

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.Not here, O Apollo!…

Человек — это странник с рожденья.
Он родится на судне,
Под которым волнуется время;
Изумлен, осчастливлен,…

Hark! ah, the nightingale—The tawny-throated!
Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!—what pain!
O wanderer from a Grecian shore

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!

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

Four years!--and didst thou stay above
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,
Were crowded, Geist! into no more?Only four years those winning ways,…

That son of Italy who tried to blow,
Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sate with his bride to see a public show.Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow…

And the first grey of morning fill'd the east,
And the fog rose out of the Oxus stream.
But all the Tartar camp along the stream
Was hush'd, and still the men were plunged in sleep;