In his
poetry, which preceded the prose, we find rather the processes through
which he reached these conclusions; we learn what is the nature of his
communing upon life, not as it affects society, but as it fronts the
individual; we learn who are the great thinkers of the past who came to
his help in the straits of life, and what is the armor which they
furnished for his soul in its times of stress.
One result of a perusal of the poems is to counteract the impression
often produced by the jaunty air assumed in the prose. The real
substance of Arnold's thought is characterized by a deep seriousness; no
one felt more deeply the spiritual unrest and distraction of his age.
More than one poem is an expression of its mental and spiritual
sickness, its doubt, ennui, and melancholy. Yet beside such poems as
_Dover Beach_ and _Stagirius_ should be placed the lines from
_Westminster Abbey_:--
For this and that way swings
The flux of mortal things,
Though moving inly to one far-set goal.
Out of this entanglement and distraction Arnold turned for help to those
writers who seemed most perfectly to have seized upon the eternal
verities, to have escaped out of the storm of conflict and to have
gained calm and peaceful seats.
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