To A Republican Friend, 1848

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Title:     To A Republican Friend, 1848
Author: Matthew Arnold [More Titles by Arnold]

God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, prized and practised by too few,
But prized, but loved, but eminent in you,
Man's 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 they require not eyes);

If sadness at the long heart-wasting show
Wherein earth's 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.

[The end]
Matthew Arnold's poem: To A Republican Friend, 1848

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