Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main,
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
1849
Footnotes
1 This and the following Early Poems are reprinted from the volume called Ambarvalia.
2 This was written for the twenty-fifth wedding-day of Mr. and Mrs. Walrond, of Calder Park.
3 Ho Thëos meta sou—God be with you!
4 The manuscript of this poem is very imperfect, and bears no title.
5 The manuscript of this poem is incomplete; but it has been thought best to give all the separate fragments, since they evidently are conceived on the same plan, and throw light on each other.
6 This poem, as well as the ‘Mari Magno,’ was not published during the author’s lifetime, and should not be regarded as having received his finishing touches.
7 Flood.
8 Reap.
9 Reaping.
10 Shocks.
11 Public-house in the hamlet.
12 This poem is reprinted from the volume called Ambarvalia.
13 Hic avidus stetit
Vulcanus, hic matrona Juno, et
Nunquam humeris positurus arcum;
Qui rore puro Castaliæ lavit
Crines solutos, qui Lyciæ tenet
Dumeta natalemque silvam,
Delius et Patareus Apollo.
14 ——domus Albuneæ resonantis,
Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis
15 These Sonnets have been brought together from very imperfect manuscripts. It is not to be supposed that their author would have given them to the public in their present state; but they are in parts so characteristic of his thought and style, that they will not be without interest to the readers of his poems.
16 These Tales were written only a few months before the writer’s death, during his journeys in Greece, Italy, and the Pyrenees, and had not been revised by him.
17 These songs were composed either during the writer’s voyage across the Atlantic in 1852, or during his residence in America.
18 Passages of the second letter of Parepidemus (vol. i. pp. 400, 401) illustrate the theory which Mr. Clough has carried into practice in these hexameters as well as in the Translations from the Iliad.
19 A great proportion of the Poems described as Miscellaneous have, like some included in previous divisions, been brought together from rough copies and unfinished manuscripts. Fragmentary and imperfect as they are, they yet are so characteristic of their writer, that they have been placed here along with others more finished.
20 This thought is taken from a passage on astronomy in Plato’s Republic, in which the following sentence occurs, vii. 529, D: ‘We must use the fretwork of the sky as patterns, with a view to the study which aims at these higher realities, just as if we chanced to meet with diagrams cunningly drawn and devised by Dædalus or some other craftsman or painter.’