Sonnets: To the Duke of Wellington. The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems. Matthew Arnold. 1909. The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840-1867

Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840–1867. 1909.

The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems

Sonnets: To the Duke of Wellington


ON HEARING HIM MISPRAISED [First published 1849.] BECAUSE thou hast believ’d, the wheels of life
Stand never idle, but go always round:
Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground,
Mov’d only; but by genius, in the strife
Of all its chafing torrents after thaw,	5
Urg’d; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand,
The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand:
And, in this vision of the general law,
Hast labour’d with the foremost, hast become
Laborious, persevering, serious, firm;	10
For this, thy track, across the fretful foam
Of vehement actions without scope or term,
Call’d History, keeps a splendour: due to wit,
Which saw one clue to life, and follow’d it.