BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #2 ("Self-Dependence" by Matthew Arnold)

The Victorian poet Matthew Arnold may be best known for his classic poem "Dover Beach," but in the Fall of 1984, a girl I liked gave me one of his lesser-known poems that, to a high school senior struggling with his identity, floored me.

Arnold critics have labeled him derivative and trite, but sometimes that's just what a teenage boy needs.

This poem changed my life and I am fiercely loyal to it, thus it's surprisingly high ranking in my list.

Self -Dependence

Weary of myself, and sick of asking

What I am, and what I ought to be,

At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me

Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.



And a look of passionate desire

O'er the sea and to the stars I send:

"Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me,

Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!



"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"



From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,

Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night-air came the answer:

"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.



"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,

Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them

Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.



"And with joy the stars perform their shining,

And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;

For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting

All the fever of some differing soul.



"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful

In what state God's other works may be,

In their own tasks all their powers pouring,

These attain the mighty life you see."



O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,

A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:

"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,

Who finds himself, loses his misery!"

Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#3 - "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Charles Simic
#4 - "we ain't got no money, honey, but we got rain" by Charles Bukowski
#5 - "Garbage" by A.R. Ammons
#6 - "Rock and Hawk" by Robinson Jeffers
#7 - "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins
#8 - "A Piece of the Storm" by Mark Strand
#9A - "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forché and
#9B - "may i feel said he" by e.e.cummings
#10 - "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" by Galway Kinnell
#11 - "Symposium" by Paul Muldoon
#12 - "Poem for the Class of..." by Max Eberts
#13 - "Boss of the Food" by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
#14 - "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath
#15 - "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
#16 - "Buddhist Barbie" by Denise Duhamel
#17 - "One Train May Hide Another" by Kenneth Koch
#18 - "Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed!) by Frank O'Hara (with Audio)
#19 - "Crumbs" by Hal Sirowitz (Audio Added)
#20 - "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
#21 - "They Feed They Lion" by Philip Levine
#22 - "Looking at Kilauea" by Garret Hongo
#23 - "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell (Audio Added)
#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok