The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

195 Through these secluded dells to cry And call us?�but too late ye come! Too late for us your call ye blow, Whose bent� was taken long ago. natural inclination

"Long since we pace this shadowed nave;

200 We watch those yellow tapers shine, Emblems of hope over the grave, In the high altar's depth divine; The organ carries to our ear Its accents of another sphere.9

205 "Fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer, How should we grow in other ground? How can we flower in foreign air? �Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease;

210 And leave our desert to its peace!"

1852(?) 1855

Preface to Poems (1853)

In two small volumes of poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the poems which compose the present volume have already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.

I have, in the present collection, omitted the poem from which the volume published in 1852 took its title.1 I have done so, not because the subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended

9. The organ music is From the abbey in the greenwood (line 174), as contrasted with the monastery on the mountaintop in which there is no organ (line 37). 1. Empedocles on Etna, the long poem that supplied the title for Arnold's second collection of poems, portrays the disillusioned reflections of the Greek philosopher and scientist Empedocles and culminates in the speaker's suicide on Mount Etna in Sicily, in the 5th century B.C.E . Because of his dissatisfaction with what he calls the "morbid" tone of Empedocles on Etna, Arnold continued to exclude it from his volumes of poetry until 1867, when he reprinted it at the request, he said, "of a man of genius, whom it had the honor and good fortune to interest�Mr. Robert Browning." It should be noted that in the arguments developed in the preface against his own poem (and against 19th-century poetry in general), Arnold is exclusively concerned with narrative and dramatic poetry. The preface, as he remarked in 1854, "leaves . . . untouched the question, how far, and in what manner, the opinions there expressed respecting the choice of subjects apply to lyric poetry; that region of the poetical Held which is chiefly cultivated at present."

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to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek

religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus,2 having

survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought

and feeling had begun fast to change, character to dwindle, the influence of

the Sophists3 to prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there entered

much that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much,

the fragments of Empedocles4 himself which remain to us are sufficient at

least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great monuments

of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have disap

peared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disap

peared; the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems

have presented themselves, we hear already the doubts, we witness the dis

couragement, of Hamlet and of Faust.5 The representation of such a man's feelings must be interesting, if consis

tently drawn. We all naturally take pleasure, says Aristotle, in any imitation or

representation whatever;6 this is the basis of our love of poetry; and we take

pleasure in them, he adds, because all knowledge is naturally agreeable to us;

not to the philosopher only, but to mankind at large. Every representation

therefore which is consistently drawn may be supposed to be interesting, inas

much as it gratifies this natural interest in knowledge of all kinds. What is not

interesting is that which does not add to our knowledge of any kind; that which

is vaguely conceived and loosely drawn; a representation which is general,

indeterminate, and faint, instead of being particular, precise, and firm. Any accurate representation may therefore be expected to be interesting;

but, if the representation be a poetical one, more than this is demanded. It is

demanded, not only that it shall interest, but also that it shall inspirit and

rejoice the reader; that it shall convey a charm, and infuse delight. For the

muses, as Hesiod says, were born that they might be "a forgetfulness of evils,

and a truce from cares":7 and it is not enough that the poet should add to the

knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he should add to their hap

piness. "All art," says Schiller, "is dedicated to Joy, and there is no higher and

no more serious problem, than how to make men happy. The right art is that

alone, which creates the highest enjoyment."8 A poetical work, therefore, is not yet justified when it has been shown to be