May acquire, if not the calm
Of its early mountainous shore,
Yet a solemn peace of its own.

And the width of the waters, the hush
Of the grey expanse where he floats,
Freshening its current and spotted with foam
As it draws to the Ocean, may strike
Peace to the soul of the man on its breast;
As the pale waste widens around him--
As the banks fade dimmer away--
As the stars come out, and the night-wind
Brings up the stream
Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea."

The English note is more distinct in some of the early love-
idyllic pages--Parting, for instance, in the Switzerland cycle.
The fifth poem of the same series ends on a strain in which
Arnold's individual accent, the specific note of his contribution
to the spiritual dialect of the nineteenth century, is heard like
a voice from the Oxford of two--or is it three ?--generations
ago--

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

One of Arnold's truest critics, Swinburne, speaking of his
Callicles, said--

"It is a model of grave, clear, solemn verse; the style plain
and bare, but sufficient and strong; the thought deep, lucid,
direct. We may say of it what the author has himself said of
the wise and sublime verses of Epictetus, that 'the fortitude of
that is for the strong, yet the few; even for them the spiritual
atmosphere with which it surrounds them is bleak and grey';
but the air is higher and purer, the ground firmer, the view
clearer; we have a surer foothold on these cold hills of thought
than in the moist fragrance of warmer air which strips the
meadows and marshes of sentiment and tradition. . . . It is
no small or common comfort, after all the delicate and ingenious
shuffling of other English poets about the edge of deep things,
to come upon one who speaks with so large and clear and calm
an utterance."

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