Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth
by Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819-1861
• Background
This is the second of the three hortatory poems I'm posting. Taken just as a poem, it's the best-crafted of the three. It is one of those "fine lyrics" of Clough's which, says the Oxford Companion to English Literature, "bear the mark of the spiritual agitation caused by religious doubts." You could say much the same thing of Clough's whole life. He went everywhere and knew everybody in the literary world of his time, but this is the only poem of his anyone remembers.
The poem appeared in 1849, when the poet was 30. The great Irish famine was a recent memory, Reform seemed to have run out of steam in England, monarchism was rising again in France, the revolutionary impulses of Europe in 1848 had petered out, and the slavery issue was heating up in the U.S.A. (where Clough spent parts of his life from childhood on). For liberal-minded folk like Clough there was need of exhortation.
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• Play the reading
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• Text of the poem
Say not the struggle naught 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 conceal'd,
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!