Matthew Arnold

Written in Butler’s Sermons

Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,
Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control,--
So men, unravelling God’s harmonious whole,
Rend in a thousand shreds this life of ours.

Vain labor! Deep and broad, where none may see,
Spring the foundations of that shadowy throne
Where man’s one nature, queen-like, sits alone,
Centred in a majestic unity;

And rays her powers, like sister-islands seen
Linking their coral arms under the sea,
Or clustered peaks with plunging gulfs between,

Spanned by aërial arches all of gold,
Whereo’er the chariot-wheels of life are rolled
In cloudy circles to eternity.