Amours de Voyage (Canto I,II)

Arthur Hugh Clough

Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it. Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork. Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo, Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots. Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed, Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in? What do I find in the Forum?  An archway and two or three pillars. Well, but St. Peter's?  Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture! No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum. Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement, This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea? Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant: 'Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!' their Emperor vaunted; 'Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!' the Tourist may answer.

Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth

Arthur Hugh Clough - clearly an optimist. May it be so for us. 

Say not the struggle naught availeth,  The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth,  And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;  It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd, Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,  And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,  Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making,  Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,  When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!   But westward, look, the land is bright!

There Is No God

Arthur Hugh Clough

‘There is no God,’ the wicked saith, ‘And truly it’s a blessing, For what he might have done with us It’s better only guessing.’

‘There is no God,’ a youngster thinks, ‘Or really, if there may be, He surely did not mean a man Always to be a baby.’

‘There is no God, or if there is,’ The tradesman thinks, ‘’twere funny If he should take it ill in me To make a little money.’

‘Whether there be,’ the rich man says, ‘It matters very little, For I and mine, thank somebody, Are not in want of victual.’

Some others, also, to themselves, Who scarce so much as doubt it, Think there is none, when they are well, And do not think about it.

But country folks who live beneath The shadow of the steeple; The parson and the parson’s wife, And mostly married people;

Youths green and happy in first love, So thankful for illusion; And men caught out in what the world Calls guilt, in first confusion;

And almost everyone when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like Him.