By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Below the surface-stream, shallow and light’: so begins a little gem of a poem which features in the complete poems of Victorian poet Matthew Arnold (1822-88). Arnold famously gave up poetry because he felt he had largely failed in his vocation, but as this five-line poem shows, he sometimes had a succinct way with words which many of his wordier contemporaries could never master.
Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel – below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel – there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.