Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/142

 that they have the force of facts. What can better words like these—

or these from Dover Beach—

This, as accurate as it is poetical, is finer but not truer—with "its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar"—than Tennyson's verse, describing the same thing—

At least, it enables Arnold to make a more human use of the natural fact than Tennyson could have done. Tennyson's phrase makes the sea and the stones of the beach be and feel like men, and, having done so, he cannot use them as illustrating the large movement of human life. But Arnold seeing and hearing them as pure nature, not humanised nature, transfers the scene