To A Republican Friend, 1848
By Matthew Arnold
God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, prizd and practisd by too few,
But prizd, but lovd, but eminent in you,
Mans fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true
And for such doing have no need of eyes:
If sadness at the long heart-wasting show
Wherein earths great ones are disquieted:
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow
The armies of the homeless and unfed:
If these are yours, if this is what you are,
Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share