Selected Poems: Arthur Hugh Clough

by Arthur Hugh Clough

The works of Arthur Clough, a poet whose work both reflected and questioned the values of 19th-century England, are collected in this compilation. With wry, wise tones, these poems explore the tensions of a time of radical change in the religious, political, and literary landscape. The critically acclaimed narrative verse "The Bothie of Tober-Na Vuolich" and the epistolary "Amours de Voyage" are included.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 19th Century

240 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2006

About the author

Arthur Hugh Clough was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough and father of Blanche Athena Clough, who both became principals of Newnham College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[James Askari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clough's is a mind given to argue with itself, to dramatise both sides of a question in distinct voices, and also to submit himself to an unwearying (though sometimes an exhausting) scrutiny. This tendency gets its fullest play in his verse dialogues, as where Didychus's 'worse' spirit, perhaps the voice of self-doubt, perhaps the devil itself, calls him out for 'inhum[ing]/your ripe age in solitary walks', for 'cherish[ing] natural instincts' more than other men 'yet to fear them'. He writes two poems about Tyrolese uprising against the Austrians in Peschiera, only saying it was glorious in defeat, and the other that it was unwise for the Italians to fight before they could win. Clough's heroes are distinctive figures in the literary culture of the time, young men with a University and specifically a classical education, sceptical of authority, flinging off duty, liberal in politics and yet looking for a cause. In aiming to accomplish something noble, they bog themselves down in earnest, alternately vaunting and self-debasing, speculation; in love, they are painfully modern and timid, holding back from honest advances, yet prone (as a woman in 'Amours de Voyage' says) to alarm and distaste should a prospective lover make up to him. Alongside religious doubt, which has been sapped as much by Biblical criticism as by scientific rationalism, another preoccupation is how sexual impulses, which move 'in Libyan dell the light gazelle/The leopard lithe in India glide' ('Natura naturans'), can be damnable, especially when unthinking (as in women).

Clough wrote two major narrative poems, both dealing with the novelistic subject matter of wooing and the movements of the heart both of men and women of the upper, and upper middle classes, in feeling their way towards commitment and a new social situation as part of a wedded couple. 'Amour' is a self-mocking comedy about an Oxford antiquarian, not political but caught in Rome during Oudinot's French invasion, who moves from hating himself for 'the horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people' (the family party of a couple, an intended and two sisters he meets smell to him of banking, or even the shop) to falling for one of the two unaccounted-for girls. For her part, she finds him conceited, even 'repulsive'. Lacking a note as to where the family went while he was still helping with the expats' evacuations, he moonily follows them round northern Italy before Maria's image fades. By contrast, the 'Bothie of Tober-na-vuolish', also engaged with questions of sexual and gender politics, class, and young men's vocation, is a tale of sentimental education leading to a stiffened moral resolve and to different forms of commitment. A reading party of Oxford men, including a narrator and a tutor or authority figure, alternate days of ten hours' study with walking and swimming and diving in Highland pools. The central figure, Philip, moves past a dangerous flirtation with a farm girl--apparently conceived on the ideological grounds that 'labour, and labour only, can add to the beauty of women'--to a romance with a middle-class laird's daughter, which is not without its misgivings and false steps, but which exists nevertheless as the vessel of the moral growth of both figures. Both Clough's longer poems are written (not exclusively in the case of 'Amours') in a highly experimental English hexameter, marked by stress, not quantity; these can be spotty, but the aesthetic interest, beyond the documentary and the ideological, is always enough to sustain a reader's interest.

[Rachel Baack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read the following poems included in this book (listed with ratings below):

“The Latest Decalogue”: This poem is Cough’s observation of the perversion of the Ten Commandments that he saw during his time. Rating: 4/5

“Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth”: Clough wrote this poem after the fighters in the European revolutions of 1848, which he had supported, were defeated. The poem charges its readers not to believe that their cause is lost and offers a hopeful outlook for the future. Rating: 4.5/5

“Spirit’s Song” (from “Dispychus”): The speaker revels in his wealth and love of its effects. The poem draws attention to the corrupting factor of wealth. Rating: 3/5

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often clever, sharp and as pointed as Byron. Amours du voyage especially fine, and the semi-Faustian Dipsychus.