Τò καλóν
I have seen higher holier things than these,
And therefore must to these refuse my heart,
Yet am I panting for a little ease;
I’ll take, and so depart.
Ah, hold! the heart is prone to fall away,
Her high and cherished visions to forget,
And if thou takest, how wilt thou repay
So vast, so dread a debt?
How will the heart, which now thou trustest, then
Corrupt, yet in corruption mindful yet,
Turn with sharp stings upon itself! Again,
Bethink thee of the debt!
— Hast thou seen higher, holier things than these,
And therefore must to these thy heart refuse?
With the true best, alack, how ill agrees
That best that thou would’st choose!
The Summum Pulchrum rests in heaven above;
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (1841)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Love, not Duty
Thought may well be ever ranging,
And opinion ever changing,
Task-work be, though ill begun,
Dealt with by experience better;
By the law and by the letter
Duty done is duty done
Do it, Time is on the wing!
Hearts, ’tis quite another thing,
Must or once for all be given,
Or must not at all be given;
Hearts, ’tis quite another thing!
To bestow the soul away
Is an idle duty-play!
Why, to trust a life-long bliss
To caprices of a day,
Scarce were more depraved than this!
Men and maidens, see you mind it;
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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Παντα ρει· ουδεν μενει
Upon the water, in the boat,
I sit and sketch as down I float:
The stream is wide, the view is fair,
I sketch it looking backward there.
The stream is strong, and as I sit
And view the picture that we quit,
It flows and flows, and bears the boat,
And I sit sketching as we float.
Each pointed height, each wavy line,
To new and other forms combine;
Proportions vary, colours fade,
And all the landscape is remade.
Depicted neither far nor near,
And larger there and smaller here,
And varying down from old to new,
E’en I can hardly think it true.
Yet still I look, and still I sit,
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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Wirkung in der Ferne
When the dews are earliest falling,
When the evening glen is grey,
Ere thou lookest, ere thou speakest,
My beloved,
I depart, and I return to thee;
Return, return, return.
Dost thou watch me while I traverse
Haunts of men, beneath the sun,
Dost thou list while I bespeak them
With a voice whose cheer is thine?
O my brothers! men, my brothers,
You are mine, and I am yours;
I am yours to cheer and succour,
I am yours for hope and aid
Lo, my hand to raise and stay you,
Lo, my arm to guard and keep,
My voice to rouse and warn you,
And my heart to warm and calm:
My heart to lend the life it owes
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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High and Low
The grasses green of sweet content
That spring, no matter high or low,
Where’er a living thing can grow,
On chilly hills and rocky rent,
And by the lowly streamlet’s side
Oh! why did e’er I turn from these?
The lordly, tall, umbrageous trees,
That stand in high aspiring pride,
With massive bulk on high sustain
A world of boughs with leaf and fruits,
And drive their wide-extending roots
Deep down into the subject plain.
Oh, what with these had I to do?
That germs of things above their kind
May live, pent up and close confined
In humbler forms, it may be true;
Yet great is that which gives our lot;
High laws and powers our will transcend,
And not for this, till time do end,
Shall any be what he is not.
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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Even the Winds and the Sea obey
SAID the Poet, I wouldn’t maintain,
As the mystical German has done,
That the land, inexistent till then,
To reward him then first saw the sun;
And yet I could deem it was so,
As o’er the new waters he sailed,
That his soul made the breezes to blow,
With his courage the breezes had failed;
His strong quiet purpose had still
The hurricane’s fury withheld;
The resolve of his conquering will
The lingering vessel impelled:
For the beings, the powers that range
In the air, on the earth, at our sides,
Can modify, temper and change
Stronger things than the winds and the tides,
By forces occult can the laws—
As we style them—of nature o’errule;
Can cause, so to say, every cause,
And our best mathematics befool;
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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Across the Sea Along the Shore
Across the sea, along the shore,
In numbers more and ever more,
From lonely hut and busy town,
The valley through, the mountain down,
What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk Galilee?
The reed that in the wind doth shake?
The weed that washes in the lake?
The reeds that waver, the weeds that float?
A young man preaching in a boat.
What was it ye went out to hear
By sea and land from far and near?
A teacher? Rather seek the feet
Of those who sit in Moses' seat.
Go humbly seek, and bow to them,
Far off in great Jerusalem.
From them that in her courts ye saw,
Her perfect doctors of the law,
What is it came ye here to note?
A young man preaching in a boat.
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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Wen Gott betrügt, ist wohl betrogen
Is it true, ye gods, who treat us
As the gambling fool is treated;
O ye, who ever cheat us,
And let us feel we’re cheated!
Is it true that poetical power,
The gift of heaven, the dower
Of Apollo and the Nine,
The inborn sense, ‘the vision and the faculty divine,’
All we glorify and bless
In our rapturous exaltation,
All invention, and creation,
Exuberance of fancy, and sublime imagination,
All a poet’s fame is built on,
The fame of Shakespeare, Milton,
Of Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley,
Is in reason’s grave precision,
Nothing more, nothing less,
Than a peculiar conformation,
Constitution, and condition
Of the brain and of the belly?
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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Cold Comfort
Say, will it, when our hairs are grey,
And wintry suns half light the day,
Which cheering hope and strengthening trust
Have left, departed, turned to dust,
Say, will it soothe lone years to extract
From fitful shows with sense exact
Their sad residuum, small, of fact?
Will trembling nerves their solace find
In plain conclusions of the mind?
Or errant fancies fond, that still
To fretful motions prompt the will,
Repose upon effect and cause,
And action of unvarying laws,
And human life’s familiar doom,
And on the all-concluding tomb.
Or were it to our kind and race,
And our instructed selves, disgrace
To wander then once more in you,
Green fields, beneath the pleasant blue;
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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To a Sleeping Child
Lips, lips, open!
Up comes a little bird that lives inside
Up comes a little bird, and peeps, and out he flies.
All the day he sits inside, and sometimes he sings,
Up he comes, and out he goes at night to spread his wings.
Little bird, little bird, whither will you go?
Round about the world, while nobody can know.
Little bird, little bird, whither do you flee?
Far away around the world, while nobody can see.
Little bird, little bird, how long will you roam?
All round the world and around again home;
Round the round world, and back through the air,
When the morning comes, the little bird is there.
Back comes the little bird and looks and in he flies,
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poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
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