Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

To a Friend

WHO prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind?—

He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul’d of men,

Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,

And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though blind.

Much he, whose friendship I not long since won

That halting slave, who in Nicopolis

Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son

Clear’d Rome of what most shamed him. But be his

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,

From first youth tested up to extreme old age,

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;

Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;

The mellow glory of the Attic stage,

Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.