Friday Poetry: Arthur Hugh Clough

Happy Friday!

I have spent most of today on my dissertation and managed to write 685 words and do some editing and reading through to make what I already had better reading. I will keep working on it over the weekend with the hope I can get a good chunk written before it is back to teaching on Monday.

I hope everyone has some good plans for the weekend ahead!

My chosen poem today is by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) who was an English poet, educationalist, and secretarial assistant to Florence Nightingale, his wife’s cousin. He was also the brother of the suffragist Anne Clough.

The message of this poem is: don’t give up, keep fighting – better things are on the way.

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. 

Arthur Hugh Clough

Happy Reading