(1-9) Explain "Now my brothers call from the bay." Test the metaphor "the wild white horses." (10-22) Note that the grip of the sea is seemingly as fierce on the mer-race as the power of religion on Margaret. "The wild white horses foam and fret." (30-47) Observe in their delirious pain that in intensity of wrong the past is confused with the present: the tragical present seems never to have had a causative past. What bell did the mer-race once hear, which now makes them hate all sweet music? Observe dramatic harmony in an agony presented by the unshut eyes of great whales which in search of something forever and aye sail round and round the world. Compare this accurate description of the sea bottom with that contained in Clarence's dream, "Richard III.," I. 4; in Keats' "Endymion" III. 119-136; in Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," Act IV., Panthea's vision; and in Kipling's "The Deep-sea Cables." (48-63) No promise is given in (62). (64-84) Subjective misery finds the objective scenery of a desolate grave-yard, where we are shut out in the blowing airs with the merchildren who feel the shiver of Margaret's coldness of heart, which is more frozen by far than the stones round about. (85-107) Here is presented the daily life of mother Margaret, whose heart

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chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure

Thrill the deepest notes of woe."

One half of the world's pleasure is drawn out of the other half's pain, and across the coffin of her past she reaches for the Bible and totters to the prison-bars, where are visible the wild white horses foaming and fretting above her little mermaiden. Arnold has let out the stops furnishing a deep labouring adagio to a poem whose theme is: What will a woman give in exchange for her soul? (108-123) Observe the way in which the woe is intensified. (124-143) The poem closes showing that forever, so long as the merman and his mermaids and boys live, they shall love Margaret by perpetual creepings along the dunes to the windy hill and to the church. It seems harder for these heathen to resist the sea than it is for Margaret to resist the call of the priest and the holy well. In agony they give up their natural element, thus evincing stronger religious zeal than Margaret when she is nearest to the holy book. Their love far exceeds the love of Margaret, who never tries to come to them for one word of explanation in regard to her desertion. Have similar spiritual tragedies been presented in English fiction: e. g., in Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth" and Mrs. Voynich's "The Gadfly"? What is the normal metre of the poem? Scan 23-29, 98–107.

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DOVER BEACH

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; — on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone: the cliffs of England stand,
5 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched sand,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

10 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

15 Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

20 Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled!

But now I only hear

25 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

30 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; 35 And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

(1-20) "moon-blanched sand." Cf. "Sohrab and Rustum

:

Cf. "A Summer Night": "moon-blanched street," and (131) of "The Forsaken Merman"; "blanched" is one of Arnold's favourite adjectives. (14) "The eternal note of sadness." In "Philomela " the refrain of the nightingale is:

"Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!"

(21-28) This passing of faith is applicable to Arnold's life. Cf." Sohrab and Rustum":

"For we are all, like swimmers in the sea,
Poised on the top of a huge wave of fate,
Which hangs uncertain to which side to fall;
And whether it will heave us up to land,

Or whether it will roll us out to sea,

Back out to sea, to the deep waves of death, —
We know not, and no search will make us know;
Only the event will teach us in its hour."

(29-37) Analyse this highest expression of Arnold's poetical power that voices the agnosticism that finally made him quit writing poetry.

SELF-DEPENDENCE

Weary of myself, and sick of asking

What I am, and what I ought to be,

At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

ΙΟ

15

20

25

O'er the sea and to the stars I send :

"Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me, Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!"

"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew;

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night-air came the answer:
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll:
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

"Bounded by themselves and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."

30

O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,

A

cry like thine in mine own heart I hear: "Resolve to be thyself; and know that he

Who finds himself loses his misery!"

Analyse this poem from the point of view of its interpreting a most selfish view of human life. In "Empedocles on Etna," Arnold expresses a similar poetic longing:

In "

"Once read thy own breast right,

And thou hast done with fears;

Man gets no other light,

Search he a thousand years.

Sink in thyself! there ask what ails thee, at that shrine."

Switzerland," he reaches out for

"The hush among the shining stars,

The calm upon the moonlit sea!

In "A Summer Night" Arnold, with "the old unquiet breast" which is neither quite possessed by passion nor quite benumbed by the world, gazing at the heavens, which present neither languor, nor trouble, nor uncertainty, longs for that incontaminate calmness of equipoise that is in their mild deeps which know not the silent pain of one who has longed deeply and longed in vain. Arnold would have it said of him as Wordsworth said of Milton, "Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart." How do Arnold's poems show one phase of nineteenth century thought? Compare "Self-Dependence" with the last sonnet of Keats'.