Poems List
Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.
Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light.
Philistinism!—We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing.
Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.
Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery.
Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair.
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn
So, loath to suffer mute, We, peopling the void air, Make Gods to whom to impute The ills we ought to bear.
Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Aegean.
Spare me the whispering, crowded loom, / The friends who come and gape and go, / The ceremonious air of gloom— / All, which makes death a hideous show.
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Arnold nasceu em Laleham, Surrey, em 1822. Ele estudou na Rugby School, onde seu pai era diretor, e no Balliol College, Oxford. Em 1843, ele ganhou o Newdigate Prize de poesia. Em 1847, ele se tornou secretário particular do Visconde de Lansdowne. Em 1851, casou-se com Frances Lucy Wightman. Ele foi nomeado professor de poesia em Oxford em 1857. Arnold publicou muitas obras, incluindo "The Strayed Reveller" (1849), "Empedocles on Etna" (1852) e "Sohrab and Rustum" (1853). Ele também escreveu ensaios críticos, como "Essays on Criticism" (1865) e "Culture and Anarchy" (1869). Arnold morreu em Liverpool em 1888, aos 65 anos.