| Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840–1867. 1909. | | | | The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems | | Sonnets: Written in Butler’s Sermons |
| | [First published 1849.]
AFFECTIONS, Instincts, Principles, and Powers, | |
| Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control— | |
| So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole, | |
| Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours. | |
| Vain labour! Deep and broad, where none may see, | 5 |
| Spring the foundations of the shadowy throne | |
| Where man’s one Nature, queen-like, sits alone, | |
| Centred in a majestic unity; | |
| And rays her powers, like sister islands, seen | |
| Linking their coral arms under the sea: | 10 |
| Or cluster’d peaks, with plunging gulfs between | |
| Spann’d by aërial arches, all of gold; | |
| Whereo’er the chariot wheels of Life are roll’d | |
| In cloudy circles, to eternity. | | | | |
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