Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
        Of possessing powers not our share?

He rebuked

    Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.

He taught that there are

    Joys which were not for our use designed.

He warned discontented youth not to expect greater happiness from advancing years, because

        one thing only has been lent
    To youth and age in common—­discontent.

Friendship is a broken reed, for

    Our vaunted life is one long funeral,

and even Hope is buried with the “faces that smiled and fled.”

Death, at least in some of its aspects, seemed to him the

    Stern law of every mortal lot,
    Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear;
    And builds himself I know not what
    Of second life I know not where.

And yet, in gleams of happier insight, he saw the man who “flagged not in this earthly strife,”

    His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,

mount, though hardly, to eternal life.  And, as he mused over his father’s grave, the conviction forced itself upon his mind that somewhere in the “labour-house of being” there still was employment for that father’s strength, “zealous, beneficent, firm.”

Here indeed is the more cheerful aspect of his “criticism of life.”  Such happiness as man is capable of enjoying is conditioned by a frank recognition of his weaknesses and limitations; but it requires also for its fulfilment the sedulous and dutiful employment of such powers and opportunities as he has.

First and foremost, he must realize the “majestic unity” of his nature, and not attempt by morbid introspection to dissect himself into

    Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers,
    Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control.

Then he must learn that

    To its own impulse every action stirs.

He must live by his own light, and let earth live by hers.  The forces of nature are to be in this respect his teachers—­

    But with joy the stars perform their shining,
    And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
    For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
    All the fever of some differing soul.

But, though he is to learn from Nature and love Nature and enjoy Nature, he is to remember that she

        never was the friend of one,
    Nor promised love she could not give;

and so he is not to expect too much from her, or demand impossible boons.  Still less is he to be content with feeling himself “in harmony” with her; for

    Man covets all which Nature has, but more.

That “more” is Conscience and the Moral Sense.

    Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
    Nature and man can never be fast friends.

And this brings us to the idea of Duty as set forth in his poems, and Duty resolves itself into three main elements:  Truth—­Work—­Love.  Truth comes first.  Man’s prime duty is to know things as they are.  Truth can only be attained by light, and light he must cultivate, he must worship.  Arnold’s highest praise for a lost friend is that he was “a child of light”; that he had “truth without alloy,”