Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnoldwas an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 December 1822
lying men good-man
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
education lying science
But the idea of science and systematic knowledge is wanting to our whole instruction alike, and not only to that of our business class ... In nothing do England and the Continent at the present moment more strikingly differ than in the prominence which is now given to the idea of science there, and the neglect in which this idea still lies here; a neglect so great that we hardly even know the use of the word science in its strict sense, and only employ it in a secondary and incorrect sense.
lying moon sea
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, glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
lying heart mean
Only--but this is rare-- When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-- A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.
enjoyed light lived small
Is it so small a thing / To have enjoyed the sun, / To have lived light in the spring, / To have loved, to have thought, to have done?
cool crossing fingers slow stream swings thames thy trailing
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe, / Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, / As the slow punt swings round.
armies clash confused ignorant night plain struggle swept
And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night
itself society
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace.
culture love origin properly study
Culture is. . . properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.
attic glory life mellow saw
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole: / The mellow glory of the Attic stage.
forth lost
Friends who set forth at our side, / Falter, are lost in the storm. / We, we only, are left!
floor shine stars whose
From whose floor the new-bathed stars / Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.
brings dust forget memory petty souls
But each day brings its petty dust our soon-choked souls to fill, and we forget because we must, and not because we will.
gives light notion perverse philistine resistance suits
Philistine gives the notion of something particularly stiff-necked and perverse in the resistance to light and its children; and therein it specially suits our middle-class.