I sometimes think that a certain wonderful blending of realism and
magic in Matthew Arnold's poetry has received but scant justice.

In "The Forsaken Merman" for instance, there are many stanzas that
make you smell the salt-foam and imagine all that lies, hidden and
strange, down there upon the glittering sand. That line,

"Where great whales go sailing by
Round the world for ever and aye,"

has a liberating power that may often recur, when one is, God knows,
far enough from the spouting of any whale! And the whole poem
has a wistful, haunting beauty that never grows tedious.

Matthew Arnold is a true classical poet. It is strictly in accordance
with the authentic tradition to introduce those touches of light,
quaint, playful, airy realism into the most solemn poetry. It is what
Virgil, Catullus, Theocritus, Milton, Landor, all did. Some persons
grow angry with him for a certain tone of half-gay, half-sad, allusive
tenderness, when he speaks of Oxford and the country round Oxford.
I do not think there is anything unpleasing in this. So did Catullus
talk of Sirmio; Horace of his Farm; Milton of "Deva's wizard-stream";
Landor of Sorrento and Amalfi.

It is all of a piece with the "resignation" of a philosophy which does
not expect that this or that change of dwelling will ease our pain; of
a philosophy that naturally loves to linger over familiar well-sides
and roadways and meadow-paths and hillsides, over the places
where we went together, when we "still had Thyrsis."

The direct Nature-poetry of Matthew Arnold, touching us with the
true classic touch, and yet with something, I know not what, of more
wistful tenderness added, is a great refreshment after the pseudo-magic,
so vague and unsatisfying, of so much modern verse.

"It matters not. Light-comer he has flown!
But we shall have him in the sweet spring days,
With whitening hedges and uncrumpling fern,
And blue-bells trembling by the forest ways,
And scent of hay new-mown--"

Or that description of the later season:

"Too quick despairer! Wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon,
Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,
And Stocks, in fragrant blow.
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open Jasmin-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the pale Moon and the white Evening