FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>  
tribute: "Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene! 'There are our young barbarians all at play!' And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her garments to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantment of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection--to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?... Home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs and unpopular names and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise ... to have left miles out of sight behind him: the bondage of 'was uns alle baendigt, Das Gemeine'?" =20.= Compare with Lowell's lines on June, in _The Vision of Sir Launfal_. =22-23.= Explain. =24. Once pass'd I blindfold here.= That is, at one time I could have passed here blindfolded, being so familiar with the country. Can you think of any other possible interpretation? =26-30.= Explain. =31-40.= Compare the thought here to that of Milton's _Lycidas_, ll. 23-38. A comparison of the two poems entire, in thought and structure, will be found to be both interesting and profitable. =Shepherd-pipe= (l. 35). The term =pipe=, also reed (l. 78), is continually used in pastoral verse as symbolic of poetry and song. [206] =38-45. Needs must I lose them=, etc. That is, I must lose them, etc. Arnold's great ambition was to devote his life to literature, which circumstances largely prevented; while Clough was eager to take a more active part in life, not being content with the uneventful career of a poet, =irk'd= (l. 40). Annoyed; worried. =keep= (l. 43). Here used in the sense of remain, =silly= (l. 45). Harmless; senseless. The word has an interesting history. =46-50=. Like Arnold, Clough held lofty ideals of life, and grieved to see men living so far below their privileges. This, with his loss of faith in God, tinged his poetry with sadness. The storms (l. 49) allude to the spiritual, political, and social unrest of the last of the first half, and first of the last half, of the nineteenth century.
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>  



Top keywords:
bondage
 

thought

 

Compare

 
century
 
poetry
 
interesting
 

Clough

 

Arnold

 

Explain

 

symbolic


pastoral
 
comparison
 

Lycidas

 

Milton

 

entire

 

Shepherd

 

structure

 

profitable

 

continually

 

living


grieved
 

ideals

 

privileges

 
spiritual
 

allude

 
political
 
social
 

nineteenth

 

unrest

 

storms


tinged

 

sadness

 
history
 
active
 

interpretation

 
prevented
 

devote

 

ambition

 

literature

 

circumstances


largely

 

content

 
uneventful
 

remain

 
Harmless
 
senseless
 

career

 

Annoyed

 
worried
 

nearer