Quote #57
Physician of the Iron Age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear - And struck his finger on the place, And said - Thou ailest here, and here.
More from Matthew Arnold
- Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece, Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
- Wordsworth has gone from us - and ye, Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen - on this iron time Of doubts,…
- Yet they, believe me, who await No gifts from Chance, have conquer'd Fate.
- Time may restore us in his course Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force; But where will Europe's latter hour Again find Wordsworth's healing…
- The World in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy.
- Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.
- Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.
- The sophist sneers: Fool, take Thy pleasure, right or wrong! The pious wail: Forsake A world these sophists throng! Be neither saint nor so…