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Arthur Hugh Clough

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Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough (January 1, 1819 – November 13, 1861) was an English poet, and the brother of Anne Clough.

Quotes

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  • ’Twas on a sunny summer day
    I trod a mighty city’s street,
    And when I started on my way
    My heart was full of fancies sweet;
    But soon, as nothing could be seen,
    But countenances sharp and keen,
    Nought heard or seen around but told
    Of something bought or something sold,
    And none that seemed to think or care
    That any save himself was there.
  • Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there
    In small bright specks upon the visible side
    Of our strange being’s party-coloured web.
  • Come back again, old heart! Ah me!
    Methinks in those thy coward fears
    There might, perchance, a courage be,
    That fails in these the manlier years;
    Courage to let the courage sink,
    Itself a coward base to think,
    Rather than not for heavenly light
    Wait on to show the truly right.
  • Thought may well be ever ranging,
    And opinion ever changing,
    Task-work be, though ill begun,
    Dealt with by experience better;
    By the law and by the letter
    Duty done is duty done
    Do it, Time is on the wing!
  • Loving—if the answering breast
    Seem not to be thus possessed,
    Still in hoping have a care;
    If it do, beware, beware!
    But if in yourself you find it,
    Above all things—mind it, mind it!
    • Love, Not Duty, st. 5
  • When panting sighs the bosom fill,
    And hands by chance united thrill
    At once with one delicious pain
    The pulses and the nerves of twain;
    When eyes that erst could meet with ease,
    Do seek, yet, seeking, shyly shun
    Ecstatic conscious unison,—
    The sure beginnings, say, be these
    Prelusive to the strain of love
    Which angels sing in heaven above?
  • Thy duty do? rejoined the voice,
    Ah, do it, do it, and rejoice;
    But shalt thou then, when all is done,
    Enjoy a love, embrace a beauty
    Like these, that may be seen and won
    In life, whose course will then be run;
    Or wilt thou be where there is none?
    I know not, I will do my duty.
  • Think where we are. Carlyle has led us all into the desert, and he has left us there.
    • Parting words to Emerson, who returned to America in July 1848. Quoted in Kingsbury Badger, "Arthur Hugh Clough as Dipsychus", Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1 (March 1951) p. 45
  • So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone,
    I with my secret self held communing of mine own.
  • Hope conquers cowardice, joy grief;
    Or at least, faith unbelief.
    • Easter Day II, ll. 34-35
  • What voice did on my spirit fall,
    Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost?
    ‘’Tis better to have fought and lost,
    Than never to have fought at all.’
  • Alas! the great world goes its way,
    And takes its truth from each new day;
    They do not quit, nor can retain,
    Far less consider it again.
  • Go; say not in thy heart, And what then were it accomplished,
    Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use or the good!
    Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished,
    What thou bast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then.
    Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit
    Say to thyself: It is good: yet is there better than it.
    This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little;
    Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.
  • That out of sight is out of mind
    Is true of most we leave behind.
    • Songs in Absence, "That Out of Sight", ll. 1–2 (wr. 1853)
  • “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.”
  • Say not the struggle nought availeth,
      The labour and the wounds are vain,
    The enemy faints not nor faileth,
      And as things have been, things 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.
  • Thou shalt have one God only; who
    Would be at the expense of two?
  • No graven images may be
    Worshipped, except the currency.
    • The Latest Decalogue, ll. 3-4
  • Honour thy parents; that is, all
    From whom advancement may befall:
    Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
    Officiously to keep alive.
    • The Latest Decalogue, ll. 9-12
  • Do not adultery commit;
    Advantage rarely comes of it.
    • The Latest Decalogue, ll. 13-14
  • Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
    When it's so lucrative to cheat.
    • The Latest Decalogue, ll. 15-16
  • Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
    Approves all forms of competition.
    • The Latest Decalogue, ll. 19-20
  • I watched them from the window, thy children at their play,
    And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away,
    And childish loves, and childish cares, and a child’s own buoyant gladness
    Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness;
    And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago,
    Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.
  • Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,
    East wind and frost are safely gone;
    With zephyr mild and balmy rain
    The summer comes serenely on;
    Earth, air, and sun and skies combine
    To promise all that’s kind and fair:—
    But thou, O human heart of mine,
    Be still, contain thyself, and bear.
  • Our ills are worse than at their ease
    These blameless happy souls suspect,
    They only study the disease,
    Alas, who live not to detect.
  • Each for himself is still the rule
    We learn it when we go to school—
    The devil take the hindmost, O!
  • O tell me, friends, while yet we part,
    And heart can yet be heard of heart,
    O tell me then, for what is it
    Our early plan of life we quit;
    From all our old intentions range,
    And why does all so wholly change?
    O tell me, friends, while yet we part!
  • My wind is turned to bitter north,
    That was so soft a south before;
    My sky, that shone so sunny bright,
    With foggy gloom is clouded o’er
    My gay green leaves are yellow-black,
    Upon the dank autumnal floor;
    For love, departed once, comes back
    No more again, no more.
  • ’Tis possible, young sir, that some excess
    Mars youthful judgment and old men’s no less;
    Yet we must take our counsel as we may
    For (flying years this lesson still convey),
    ’Tis worst unwisdom to be overwise,
    And not to use, but still correct one’s eyes.
  • Dance on, dance on, we see, we see
    Youth goes, alack, and with it glee,
    A boy the old man ne’er can be;
    Maternal thirty scarce can find
    The sweet sixteen long left behind.
  • As ships becalmed at eve, that lay
      With canvas drooping, side by side,
    Two towers of sail, at dawn of day
      Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.
    • Qua Cursum Ventus. Compare: "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Pt. III, The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth, sec. IV

The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich (1848)

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  • The grave man, nicknamed Adam.
    • Pt. I
  • ... High-kilted perhaps, as once at Dundee I saw them,
    Petticoats up to the knees, or even, it might be, above them,
    Matching their lily-white legs with the clothes that they trod in the wash-tub!
    • Pt. II
  • Good, too, Logic, of course; in itself, but not in fine weather.
    • Pt. II
  • ... O musical chaff of old Athens,
    Dishes, and fishes, bird, beast, and sesquipedalian black-guard!
  • ... In a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey,
    Barefoot, barelegged, he beheld her, with arms bare up to the elbows,
    Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting potatoes
    • Pt. III
  • Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market;
    Knowledge needful for all, yet cannot be had for the asking.
    • Pt. IV
  • Women are weak, as you say, and love of all things to be passive,
    Passive, patient, receptive, yea, even of wrong and misdoing,
    Even to force and misdoing with joy and victorious feeling
    Patient, passive, receptive; for that is the strength of their being,
    Like to the earth taking all things, and all to good converting.
    • Pt. IV
  • A world where nothing is had for nothing.
    • Pt. VIII
  • There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our battalions;
    Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in our stations.
    • Pt. IX
  • They are married and gone to New Zealand.
    • Pt. IX

Amours de Voyage (1858)

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  • Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,
    Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.
    • Canto I, pt. ii
  • The horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people.
    • Canto I, pt. xi
  • Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female?
    Really, who knows? ...
    Ah, for a child in the street I could strike; for the full-blown lady—
    Somehow, Eustace, alas! I have not felt the vocation.
    • Canto II, pt. iv
  • I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action
    Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,
    Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;
    We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.
    • Canto II, pt. xi
  • But for his funeral train which the bridegroom sees in the distance,
    Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage procession?
    • Canto III, pt. vi
  • Allah is great, no doubt, and Juxtaposition his prophet.
    • Canto III, pt. vi
  • Mild monastic faces in quiet collegiate cloisters:
    • Canto III, pt. ix
  • Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle,
    Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?
    • Canto V, pt. vi

Dipsychus (1862)

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  • ‘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.’
    • Pt. I, sc. v
  • 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 every one when age,
      Disease, or sorrows strike him,
    Inclines to think there is a God,
      Or something very like Him.
    • Pt. I, sc. v
  • Trust me, I’ve read your German sage
    To far more purpose e’er than you did;
    You find it in his wisest page,
    Whom God deludes is well deluded.
    • Pt. II, sc. ii
  • They may talk as they please about what they call pelf
    They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking
    But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking,
      How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
      How pleasant it is to have money.
    • Pt. II, sc. ii
  • I sit at my table en grand seigneur,
    And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor;
    Not only the pleasure, one’s self, of good living,
    But also the pleasure of now and then giving.
      So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
      So pleasant it is to have money.
    • Pt. II, sc. ii
  • Afloat; we move. Delicious! Ah,
    What else is like the gondola?
    • Sc. v
  • This world is bad enough, may-be;
       We do not comprehend it;
    But in one fact can all agree
       God won't, and we can't mend it.
    • Sc. v
  • I drive through the streets, and I care not a d-mn;
    The people they stare, and they ask who I am;
    And if I should chance to run over a cad,
    I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.
    • Sc. v
  • They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
    And how one ought never to think of one's self,
    And how pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking—
    My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking
      How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
      How pleasant it is to have money.
    • Sc. v
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