[edgar] MATTHEW ARNOLD AS POET. 317 



to stimulate only a flutter in the mind of the reader. The yearning 

 and the ecstasy of Shelley have but a pale reflection in his work, 

 and equally remote from his temperate manner is the warm-blooded 

 passion of Burns. The "Switzerland" group and "Faded Leaves" 

 proclaim the hesitating lover, and apart from these faintly anaemic 

 poems Arnold systematically abstains from the lyric theme of love. 



It is within the range of the reflective lyric that he has earned 

 his triumphs, and it is here and in his superb elegies that he challenges 

 comparison with the greatest of his rivals. He based his belief in 

 the enduring efficacy of his poetry on a claim that it was more in 

 harmony with the modern march of thought than the poetry of either 

 Tennyson or Browning. "I shall have my turn" he confidently 

 said. However the future may decide the issue, it still is clear that 

 in a narrow sense he does reflect more faithfully than they some 

 aspects of the contemporary mind, and affords to a class of readers 

 who value ideas a satisfaction that no other poet of his century yields. 

 Poetry at high tension he rarely gives us, but what, infinite relish there 

 is for us who love him in his cool and quiet lines! 



Fine in quality though his casual lyrics are, in the elegies Arnold 

 has undoubtedly attained his highest reach of power. He is not 

 by nature tuneful and has not the easy naturalness which permitted 

 Herrick for example to make musical the most casual matters of his 

 daily experience, but in the elegy he moves among the greatest, for 

 here at last we have all the powers of his intellectual and emotional 

 nature working in unison, here his passion has substance and his 

 thought has warmth. The music of the lyrics too is often thin or 

 halting even and insecure. The rhythmic phrasing on the other 

 hand of the "Thyrsis" and its companion piece "The Scholar Gipsy" 

 has the richness and the sensuous glow of Keats when he is most 

 fastidiously an artist in his odes. And nowhere else has Arnold re- 

 vealed to us in such satisfying measure the resources of his poetic 

 imagination. The "Dover Beach" and a few great lyrics besides 

 have a high imaginative quality, but they move within narrow limits 

 and the vistas they open are soon closed. His ordinary lyric is sharp- 

 edged, luminous and clear. In the elegies we discover at last the 

 misty margins of the poet's mind, and their evocative and suggestive 

 qualities liberate as only the greatest poetry can the creative energies 

 of the reader. And the impressions they produce on the mind are 

 in no wise confused, because the poems are wrought under the impulse 

 of a dominant mood which is never relaxed however artfully it may 

 be varied from stanza to stanza. There are no prosaic lapses to 

 break the spell to which we willingly surrender ourselves, and there 

 is no intrusion of such alien material as perplexes us for example 



