pleasing amusement, and one need not have much sympathy with his sorrows. Those whom I do sympathise with are those who have no voice, who appeal to no public, who live in lonely trouble with the troubled world. Yet they, too, have their outlet. What the poet sings truly expresses them to themselves. There is always a way to the common-sense of joy if only we look for it. These silent souls can read and be relieved: but that makes it all the more incumbent on the poet to take care that his muse should also prophesy joy and be the refreshment of care as well as the revealer of sorrow.
Arnold, though he cried out a great deal, did not hold this sentimental view of the poet. There is a fine passage in Resignation which enshrines another view. It is too long to quote, but it illustrates his poetic aim—and it belongs to his earliest poems.
Heaven doth a quicker pulse impart,
Subdues that energy to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
Though he move mountains, though his day
Be pass'd on the proud heights of sway,
Though he hath loosed a thousand chains,
Though he hath borne immortal pains,
Action and suffering though he know—
He hath not lived, if he lives so.
He sees the great ruler wisely sway the people, and the just conquests of beauty, and the populous town; the whole movement of life; rejoices in it, but does not say: I am alone.
