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Home  »  English Poetry III  »  707. Worldly Place

English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Matthew Arnold

707. Worldly Place

EVEN in a palace, life may be led well!

So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,

Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den

Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,

And drudge under some foolish master’s ken

Who rates us if we peer outside our pen—

Match’d with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,

Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;

And when my ill-school’d spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,

I’ll stop, and say: “There were no succor here!

The aids to noble life are all within.”