Yesterday i was reading Orwell (still Coming up for air), and i had to look up a Keats poem, Ode to a nightingale in an anthology. Accidentally i’ve found a poem, a sonnet, to be exact, that really touched me. It was written in 1849 by the english poet Matthew Arnold. It must’ve been a shock to him when the Revolution failed.
Not in sunk Spain’s prolong’d death agony;
Not in rich England, bent but to make pour
The flood of the world’s commerce on her shore;
Not in that madhouse, France, from whence the cry
Afflicts grave Heaven with its long senseless roar;
Not in American vulgarity,
Nor wordy German imbecility—Lies any hope of heroism more.
Matthew Arnold – Sonnet to the Hungarian Nation
Hungarians! Save the world! Renew the stories
Of men who against hope repell’d the chain,
And make the world’s dead spirit leap again
On land renew that Greek exploit, whose glories
Hallow the Salaminian promontories,
And the Armada flung to the fierce main.
