At last we seem to find this scholar and poet, Christian born and Christian bred, sinking into the pantheism of heathenism, such as our missionaries confront in India.
Myriads who live, who have lived,
What are we all but a mood,
A single mood, of the life
Of the Being in whom we exist,
Who alone is all things in one?
Through all Mr. Arnold’s utterances there seems a certain air of condescension. To the masses, “the un-Hellenic public,” he seems to look from his own “islet” and say, “Cultivate your own spirit;” “Cherish light and sweetness,” and to add, “Look at me and aspire to your own best self.” This looks like a delicate self-worship, such as was in Goethe, and thither “self-culture” easily leads.
In Mr. Arnold as poet one finds enough to admire and enjoy. His first volume of poems was given anonymously to the world in 1849. It made some stir. We thought another of the immortals was among us, and so it proved. He followed in song the same who were his masters in culture, striving, “Wordsworth’s sweet calm, and Goethe’s wide and luminous view to gain.” He took up poetry seriously, for he thought that “poetry is the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science,” “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” To him poetry is no idle warbling, but an intense criticism of life in which he works from sense of duty. In all his poems one finds dignity and grace of spirit, something of Goethe’s spiritual unrest, and of Wordsworth’s healing balm found in communion with nature.
Thus, after Rustum in desperate fight has unknowingly slain his son Sohrab, (who has disclosed himself in his last moments) with how quiet dignity does the Oxus move on, leaving on its bank Sohrab in his gore, and Rustum in his hot agony and blinding tears!
But the majestic river floated on