Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. The Forsaken Merman (l. 1-7). . . Selected Poems and Prose [Matthew Arnold]. Allot, Miriam, ed. (1993) J.M. Dent.)

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. The Last Word (l. 13-16). . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. The Last Word (l. 9-10). . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)

If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well for any great class and description of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to provide for them.... A class of men may often itself not either fully understand its wants, or adequately express them; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. repr. In The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol. 9, ed. R.H. Super (1973). "The Future of Liberalism," Irish Essays and Others (1882).)

Come away, away children;
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. The Forsaken Merman (l. 18-21). . . Selected Poems and Prose [Matthew Arnold]. Allot, Miriam, ed. (1993) J.M. Dent.)

Who ordered, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire??
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. Switzerland (l. 19-24). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.)

Yes! in sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. Switzerland (l. 1-4). . . Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1918. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. (New ed., rev. and enl., 1939) Oxford University Press.)

Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. Culture and Anarchy, ch. 1 (1869).)

As our actual present world ... shows itself more clearly?our world of an aristocracy materialised and null, a middle-class purblind and hideous, a lower class crude and brutal?we shall turn our eyes again, and to more purpose, upon this passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. "Byron," Essays in Criticism, Second Series (1888).)

We admire with awe
The exulting thunder of your race;
You give the universe your law,
You triumph over time and space!
Your pride of life, your tireless powers,
We laud them, but they are not ours.

(Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet, critic. Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (l. 163-168). . . Selected Poems and Prose [Matthew Arnold]. Allot, Miriam, ed. (1993) J.M. Dent.)