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Today, on July 9th, 2008, the site contains 193 poets, 8,680 poems and 4,505 comments.
Matthew Arnold - Lines Written in Kensington Gardens 

In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!
But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,
Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die
Before I have begun to live.

Added: on June 6th, 2005 at 8:57 AM | Viewed: 783 times | Comments (2)


Lines Written in Kensington Gardens - Comments and Information

Poet: Matthew Arnold
Poem: Lines Written in Kensington Gardens

Comment 2 of 2, added on October 3rd, 2005 at 9:54 PM.

Although your analysis of the poem is marvelous, I believe Arnold wrote this poem as a tribute to a dead friend. If you notice, the narrator of the poem is deceased. I don't believe there is a very deep meaning to this poem, and any ideas about it must be derived within this context.

Michael from United States
Comment 1 of 2, added on June 6th, 2005 at 8:57 AM.

In 'Lines Written in Kensington Gardens' Arnold invests the physical landscape of the sequestered glade with metaphorical meaning - it represents an idyllic island in which a lonely man can collect his thoughts against the backdrop of London's 'girdling city'. The speaker is a man displaced by the unpleasant social changes brought about by the industrial revolution. Thus, he is hurled aggressively 'on men's impious uproar', impotently carried away with the tide of modernity with no way of reclaiming the harmony of his rural past except through memory. The speaker tries to recapture the pastoral peace of his childhood by retreating into the glade and absorbing the tranquility of nature, 'how green under the boughs it is!' he exhorts. Disillusioned with his adult responsibilites in the raving social world of the city, Arnold petitions to nature's 'calm soul of all things' to bring him inner calm. Nature's 'endless, active life' in which each organism has its correct place and duty in the system represents the type of happy, harmless work that the speaker wants to engage in. However, while the speaker's mind is actively surveying his surroundings and reflecting on the value of the 'tired angler's' working life, his body is sedentary and inactive. What does this say about the search for a happy and fulfilled life? Obviously the speaker's working responsibilities are not fulfilling, or else he would not have to escape to the garden in the first place. Essentially, the poem depicts the desperate hope of a man in the midst of a spiritual crisis who is yearning for something to fill the void of lost faith. Perhaps nature is the answer, even if it only grants him temporary solace and peace of mind for a while.

EJP from Australia

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Lines Written in Kensington Gardens

Last read:
2008-07-03 21:16:09
Viewed 783 times.

Added on June 6th, 2005 at 8:57 AM.


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