127. ME and THEE: "some dividual Existence or Personality distinct from the Whole" (Fitzgerald).

133-136. Then of the THEE in ME etc.: Then he strove, prayerfully, for some glimpse of divine personality working in the depths of his own spirit. But only Nature answered, saying: "There is nothing, even within yourself, but my impersonal life."- Contrast "In Memoriam," CXXIV, CXXXI (pages 341, 343).

149. such a story: Cf. "Rabbi Ben Ezra," line 151 ff. (page 462) and the

note.

153. And not a drop etc.: alluding to the Oriental custom of throwing a little wine on the ground before drinking. (481.) 173. the Soul: here, almost equivalent to "Life;" cf. lines 181-184, 200-208. - In this part of the poem is given the pantheistic view which Omar shared with other intellectuals of his day: a belief in a single impersonal Life of which individuals are but transient manifestations running through man and nature.

179. Ferrásh: attendant.
183. Sáki: wine-bearer.

198. Alif: the letter A, often represented by a slight stroke like an apostrophe.

203. from Máh to Máhi: from fish to moon.

205-206. then back of darkness: then plunging back again behind the veil of darkness (see line 126).

(482.) 221-224. For "IS" and "IS NOT" etc. a jesting reference to his scientific studies. “He very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken

346. Súfi: a Mohammedan mystic, with a strong pantheistic strain. - The Persian Sufis, while formally adhering, unlike Omar, to Islam, were inclined to ambiguous doctrine and sensual conduct, for which they were ridiculed by him. See the biography, above.

358. The little Moon etc.: The new moon marking the close of Ramazán (see note to line 326, above) "is looked for with the utmost anxiety, and hailed with acclamation: then it is that the Porter's knot may be heard toward the cellar" (Fitzgerald). - The "Porter's shoulderknot" (line 360) was a strap in which the jars were strung.

(485.) 363-364. And lay me

gar

den-side: According to tradition, one of Omar's pupils related the following: - "I often used to hold conversations with my teacher, Omar Khayyám, in a garden; and one day he said to me, 'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.' . . . Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishápúr, I went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so as the stone was hidden under them."

(485.) 369. the Idols: his Wine and his Wine-poetry, as implied in the rest of the stanza. See note to line 119, above.

373. repentance: See line 26, and the note to line 119, above. - Omar's vows of repentance may be regarded as more or less of a poetic fiction. Fitzgerald says he was probably "moderate" in his use of wine and "bragged more than he drank of it, in very defiance." In lines 369-380 he is ironically looking at himself from the standpoint. standpoint of conventional Mohammedan society.

401. Sákí: See lines 164, 183.
405. Taman: The End.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (1819-1861)

Clough is commonly thought of, along with Matthew Arnold, as a poet of doubt; more exactly, however, his distinction is his unworldly integrity. With a deep sense for the "unknown because divine" (in his own phrase), he was also unflinchingly honest in his facing of experience. This twofold spirit was developed in him early, through feflective reading, and through the influence of the great head master of his school, 'Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby. At Rugby, Clough not only excelled in football and swimming (a true Englishman, he ever remained fond of outdoor activity), but received the highest scholastic honor the Balliol scholarship at Oxford.

When Clough went up to Oxford in 1837, the University was profoundly stirred by the "Oxford Movement" (see the note introductory to Newman, page

715), and for a time his religious nature felt itself drawn by the strong currents of thought and spiritual feeling that were revitalizing a moribund faith. More and more, however, he asserted his independence, embarking upon a course of solitary skepticism which he was never afterward to abandon. Failing to fulfill his scholarly promise, he disappointed his friends, including Dr. Arnold; but “The object of honors," he said, "is to make men read and not to make them distinguished." Holding this view, he worked hard, not for examinations, but for self-discipline, leading a life of Spartan austerity (passing a whole winter without a fire) and seeking, with all deliberation, truly to possess his mind and character.

In 1843 Clough was appointed tutor at Oriel College, Oxford. Inconspicuous in the University because of his intellectual aloofness, he became the object of affectionate admiration within his college. Devoted to teaching, expert in his knowledge of the classical civilizations, he saw a pleasant and useful career before him. But beneath the uneventful external life, an intense inner life was shaping his convictions, until, after a few years, he definitely felt that he was in a false position, out of sympathy with the Anglican institution of which he was a member, hindered in his instinct for fearless expression. Accordingly, in 1848, after long brooding, he resigned his tutorship and with it his means of support. "When Clough left Oxford," I wrote his American admirer Charles Eliot Norton, "he had conquered the world. . . . Whatever might become of him, whatever he might become, his life was a success such as scarcely one man in a generation achieves."

Loving the truth even more than he loved Oxford and its beautiful life, he never afterward found permanently congenial work. For two years he was head of University Hall, London, an unsectarian institution in which he nevertheless felt the pressure of conventional opinion. For a year, 1852-53, he lived at Cambridge, Massachusetts, warmly welcomed by the literary society centered there and at Concord. Returning to England, het entered the public service in the Educa

tion Office, which was to engage most of his time for the eight years that remained to him. He married felicitously. Outwordly, his life continued to belie the promise of his early years; but he held the esteem of many of the best minds of his time, and his verse is a fine white flame in the poetry of the nineteenth century.

IN A LECTURE-ROOM

Written at Oxford before Clough became a don at Oriel, these lines contain something of Newman's anti-rationalism. Progress toward "the Eternal Shore" cannot be made by "labor at the dull mechanic oar," i.e., by mere logic. But the poem does not offer as an alternative Newman's dogmatism - what does it offer?

HOW OFTEN SIT I

One of ten poems grouped under a title ("Blank Misgivings,' etc.) taken from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," stanza IX (page 42). - Does Clough here suggest any "intimations?"

QUA CURSUM VENTUS

The title means: "where the wind [directs] their course.

AMOURS DE VOYAGE

PROEM OF CANTO FIRST

(487.) 3. to a land etc.: Italy, where Clough spent a long holiday before undertaking his duties at University Hall, London. Clough's philosophy of travel, as here expressed, is similar to his friend Emerson's: “Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places . . . I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from." "The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home." ("Self-Reliance.")

FROM CANTO FIRST

39. Monte Testaccio: a mound, above the Tiber, composed, as the name in

dicates, of broken pottery, left there when wine and oil were unpacked at the Emporium.

45. Coliseum: See Byron's treatment of this (page 158).- Contrast Clough's mood with that of "Childe Harold."

PROEM OF CANTO SECOND

12. brings him in arms: The reference is to the French, besieging Rome at the time of Clough's visit.

DIPSYCHUS

PART SECOND, SCENE II

Underlying the first of these two lyrics is a perception of the spiritual unity of mankind, enjoining sympathy for "others;" underlying the second, a perception of the spiritual potentiality of the individual, enjoining self-reliance.

EASTER DAY

This poem and the following express the questionings of a modern mind in the age of the "higher criticism" of the Bible and of Strauss's epochal Life of Jesus (Leben Jesu, 1835, translated by George Eliot about three years before these poems were written). The first poem accepts the criticism which human reason makes of miracle. The second poem, a kind of epilogue to the first, asserts that, while the old unquestioning faith is now impossible, faith in the reality and supremacy of the good is still possible. In this sense, Christ still lives. Which of the two moods that of disillusionment and that of faith in "the true creed" is the stronger?

1. great sinful streets: implying the failure of Christianity. (489.) 25. one or more great angels: See Matthew, XXVIII, 5; Mark, XVI, 5; Luke, XXIV, 4; John, XX, 12.

28. appeared to Peter or the Ten: See Luke, XXIV, 34, 36-43; John, XX, 19-25. 29. to blind Saul: See Acts, IX,

1-9; Galatians, I, 11-17.

30. an after Gospel and late Creed: i.e., developed by the imagination of the early Church long after Christ's death,

according to one theory of the "higher criticism." The other theory, - that the disciples in their excitement imagined they saw him immediately after his death, - is alluded to in the text.

(489.) 35. Emmaüs inn . . . Capernaum's Lake: See Luke, XXIV, 13-35; John, XXI, I-24.

59. the one sad Gospel that is true: See the note to line 30, above. (490.) 124-125. impossible birth only mother earth: the miraculous birth of the Christ in contrast with the human birth of Jesus. The idea of the context is that "pleading eyes" (line 121) and "strong desire" (line 122) cannot create a divine Person for humanity to draw toward and rest in, cannot alter the fact that Jesus was born, as all men are born, of mother Earth.

138. Gardener nor other: See John, XX, 15. The allusion is continued in the next line.

146-148. Is He not risen?: Observe that the plain-spoken denial in all the preceding stanzas here shifts into the interrogative mood; and this, while providing a final summit of feeling, also prepares the way for the answering poem that follows.

EASTER DAY, II

(491.) 6. Another voice: What is the voice, and what was the first voice in the inner debate?

AH! YET CONSIDER IT AGAIN!

It was not for Clough, an apt pupil of a great historian and churchman, Dr. Arnold, and a true son of tradition-loving Oxford in the days of the religious revival led by Newman, to assume that "the new" (line 2) was true because it was new, and that the "old thought," the costly earnings of two thousands of years of human experience, should be discarded without being considered again and again. His own course is not that of "the great world" (line 13), which lives only contemporaneously, changing its truth from age - neither retaining the old truth nor even expressly quitting it, but heed

to age,

lessly accepting the partial truth of the day that is.

SEHNSUCHT

The German title may be translated "Ardent Desire." The topic is the mystery of the flux of feeling, controlled by the wise by means of intelligence and the moral consciousness, but retaining its enigmatical origin and meaning. Whence our vague desires? And what are they really? In the great poetic revival early in the century, Sehnsucht was welcomed and cultivated in a faith more or less blind. By the reflective and less spontaneous Victorians, and notably by the questioning Clough and Arnold, it was subjected to an earnest criticism. (Browning, however, was different: what was his view?) The present poem should recall, by way of contrast, certain verses from the early century,-e.g., in Wordsworth's "Expostulation and Reply" and "The Tables Turned" (pages 5-6).

(492.) 17. from the vulgar ground: Do our fluctuant emotions, he means, spring from our fleshly bond with nature, or have they a supernal origin (the "seats of bliss" in line 14)? Observe the answer to this question provided in the closing stanzas.

SONGS IN ABSENCE

These lyrics, written by Clough either during his voyage to America or during his American residence, were addressed to the lady who became his wife. As love poems, they are strikingly unlike the fresh and passionate outpourings of the more romantic lovers of the early years of the century. Here are no surging emotions and cloudlike bowers of bliss, but a quiet, reflective forging of a relation between love and character and immortal personality. It is typical of Clough that many of these finely-knit meditations should be stated as questions.

SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE
NOUGHT AVAILETH

Life is to be faced, not in disillusioned hopelessness, but in courageous endurance,

and with a sense of the whole human struggle, of which our individual efforts form part. Note how the idea of the poem is carried through the three symbols: the battle, the sea-waves, the climbing sun.

HOPE EVERMORE AND BELIEVE

(494.) 1-2. e'en as thy thought thou see'st: The world we live in is the world shaped by our minds; the world is plastic to our intelligence and will. To the courageous mind, life is something to be invaded and conquered (lines 7-10).

16. the Duty to do: The essence of living is action, labor; not materialistic labor (line 15), but labor for the joy of fulfilling our nature -"the joy of the deed" (line 16) in the higher "volition and action" (line 17). With spiritual purpose ("With the great girdle of God," line 18) we may invade and conquer and encompass this world, this life, in which we find ourselves placed.

our

Vague and ineffable, "unknown because divine" (line 10), the Source of our light and leading must remain. With earthly love of the definite, we would fain give shape to our sense of the divine, describe the light that inspires, report the high word that comes to us; but the Inconceivable and Inexpressible baulks our fondest efforts. All that we know is that the divine, or rather an image of the divine, is enshrined in the human spirit, in our heart of hearts. With that we must be content, nor seek to draw it out of the

temple (literally "profane" it) into the light of common day. The paradoxes and defeats resulting from the attempt to relate ourselves through definite forms with the divine, are also suggested by the title of the poem -"A Hymn Unsung," or "A Hymn But Not a Hymn."

(495.) 29-32. Nor say, nor yet deny etc.: Cf. the indecisive drift of certain passages in the two "Easter Day" poems (page 488).

35-40. at least in eyes etc.: I will not ask even to feel the divine presence in the shrine of my human soul and heart, if the divine manifests itself in the conduct of life, the life I share with others, -directing our intelligence, giving us power to act, guiding our judgment. Thus the poet returns toward the idea of the preceding poem.

ALL IS WELL

In this poem, as in the preceding ("With Whom is No Variableness," page 496), the poet concludes with equanimity, but not with Browning's personal optimism, that all is well with the world. If we perish, still Truth endures unchanging. If we are ignorant of our destiny; we must have faith as the vessel sails on. And when pangs of doubt beset us, we must forget them in sleep and, waking, "work again" (line 5), lending our energies to the divine purpose. Cf. "Qui Laborat, Orat" (page 495).

IN A LONDON SQUARE

Here the onward-going vessel that serves as a symbol in the preceding poem is replaced with the appointed march of the seasons.

(496.) 1. plane: the plane-tree, common in London.

8. Be still, contain thyself, and bear: This line phrases summarily the stoical spirit of Clough.

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888)

Writing to his mother in 1869, when his poetry had not won the public recognition it has since received, Arnold asserted that