r joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain."

This is the contradiction of sense and thought, the voice of a regret
grounded in the intellect (for if it were vital and grounded in the
emotions it would become despair); the creed of illusion and futility in
life, which is the characteristic note of Arnold, and the reason of his
acceptance by many minds. The one thing about life which he most insists
on is its isolation, its individuality. In the series called
'Switzerland,' this is the substance of the whole; and the doctrine is
stated with an intensity and power, with an amplitude and prolongation,
that set these poems apart as the most remarkable of all his lyrics.
From a poet so deeply impressed with this aspect of existence, and
unable to find its remedy or its counterpart in the harmony of life, no
joyful or hopeful word can be expected, and none is found. The second
thing about life which he dwells on is its futility; though he bids one
strive and work, and points to the example of the strong whom he has
known, yet one feels that his voice rings more true when he writes of
Obermann than in any other of the elegiac poems. In such verse as the
'Summer Night,' again, the genuineness of the mood is indubitable. In
'The Sick King of Bokhara,' the one dramatic expression of his genius,
futility is the very centre of the action. The fact that so much of his
poetry seems to take its motive from the subsidence of Christian faith
has set him among the skeptic or agnostic poets, and the "main movement"
which he believed he had expressed was doubtless that in which
agnosticism was a leading element. The unbelief of the third quarter of
the century was certainly a controlling influence over him, and in a man
mainly intellectual by nature it could not well have been otherwise.

Hence, as one looks at his more philosophical and lyrical poems--the
profounder part of his work--and endeavors to determine their character
and sources alike, it is plain to see that in the old phrase, "the pride
of the intellect" lifts its lonely column over the desolation of every
page. The man of the academy is here, as in the prose, after all. He
reveals himself in the literary motive, the bookish atmosphere of the
verse, in its vocabulary, its elegance of structure, its precise phrase
and its curious allusions (involving footnotes), and in fact, throughout
all its form and structure. So self-conscious is it that it