Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/148

 and longing; and only a shred of them could he ever put into all his verse. Yes, cries Nature, when all the poets who, because they were part of me, thought that my life was theirs, are dead dust, I remain as living, as young as ever. This is the law. Nature, rich and full in us when we are young, we think to have no life but that which we give her. But as years pass by, our energy fails, and, like fools, we think our decay is a decay in nature. But she watches us, silent and contemptuous. Her living beauty never sees our corruption. Therefore, cries Arnold, while we are able, get into vital union with the calm, and obedience and life of nature, order the soul into the spirit of her life—

That is his conclusion. It would not be mine from the premises, and it belongs to that part of Arnold's thinking which he derived from stoicism. It were better to rise out of one's soul into love of the soul of the world, to lose oneself in its beauty and joy and peace by self-forgetfulness, to see the perfect good outside of one's self, and spring off one's own shadow into union with the infinite light. No man can change his yearning to the greatness of nature into possession of that greatness who is sunk in his personal soul. But outside of that prison, ravished by the love of the perfect—he retains in decay, in old age, in death, not