These are some of the cries of his first poems, when he was but twenty-seven, It is plain, then, that the racking trouble of man's disobedience to law, his necessary restlessness, and the confused noise that attended it—in contrast with Nature's obedience, tranquillity, and steady toil—were heavily pressed on Arnold by the circumstances of his time. He found no solution of the problem now, none in reasoning, none in warring religions and philosophies. "I will listen no more to them," he thought; "I will fall back on my own soul; know the worst and endure it austerely, holding fast to the power of righteousness within. Of that I may be sure. The will is free, the seeds of Godlike power are in us. Within, we may be what we will."
This did not solve the question, but it gave a noble basis for life, and the worry of the question might be laid by. What we can, we will secure. Then wait, and as the world goes on the question may solve itself. At least, if the solution come, those who wait quietly in patient righteousness obeying law, will be capable of seeing it. Even if we are mixed up with a blind Nature, with matter alone, have ourselves no divine origin, and no end beyond the elements, there is that in us which is ready for either fate, and which is above both, and can choose how to meet the one or the other. There is a remarkable poem—In Ultrumque Paratus—which, on a higher poetic level than most of the other poems in this first volume, puts this view before us.
