| Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840–1867. 1909. | | | | The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems | | Sonnets: To a Republican Friend |
| | [First published 1849. Reprinted 1853, ’54, ’57.]
GOD 1 knows it, I am with you. If to prize | |
| Those virtues, priz’d and practis’d by too few, | |
| But priz’d, but lov’d, but eminent in you, | |
| Man’s fundamental life: if to despise | |
| The barren optimistic sophistries | 5 |
| Of comfortable moles, whom what they do | |
| Teaches the limit of the just and true— | |
| And for such doing have no need of eyes: | |
| If sadness at the long heart-wasting show | |
| Wherein earth’s great ones are disquieted: | 10 |
| If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow | |
| The armies of the homeless and unfed:— | |
| If these are yours, if this is what you are, | |
| Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share. | |
| | | Note 1. To a Republican Friend, 1848. Title] i. e. A. H. Clough. date first inserted in 1853. [back] | | |
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