FastSaying

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

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Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.
— Matthew Arnold
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In his poetry as well as in his life Shelley was indeed 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel', beating in the void his luminous wings in vain
— Matthew Arnold
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Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things
— Matthew Arnold
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The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject
— Matthew Arnold
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Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side—
And then come back down.
Singing: "There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.

(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman')
— Matthew Arnold
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