Matthew Arnold

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things

This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.

This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.

And see all sights from pole to pole
And glance, and nod, and bustle by,
And never read more

And see all sights from pole to pole
And glance, and nod, and bustle by,
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.

Hark! ah, the nightingale--
The tawny-throated!
Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
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Hark! ah, the nightingale--
The tawny-throated!
Hark from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark!--what pain!
. . . .
Again--thou hearest?
Eternal passion!
Eternal pain!

The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and
light.

The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and
light.