Yes ! we await it, but it still delays,
And then we suffer ! and amongst us one,
Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne ;
And all his store of sad experience he
Lays bare of wretched days.
This passage is taken from Matthew Arnold’s pastoral elegy The Scholar Gipsy. Here the poet refers to the sufferings and frustrations of modern life. In this connection, he particularly mentions how some great intellectuals had sought consolation by means of philosophical tolerance of all sufferings and frustrations.
Modern men and women await eagerly for the appropriate inspiration, but this does not come, and so they have to suffer. Some intellectual genius among them takes the matter philosophically. Despite his acute suffering, he tries to make an intellectual assessment of all his miseries and sufferings. He expresses his own experiences, his deep sorrows and tragic sufferings. This is how intellect cries to rationalise and interpret the frustration of modern life through philosophical assessment.
The intellectual person, mentioned here, is possibly Lord Tennyson. In his celebrated elegy, In Memoriam, the poet has given out the beginning of his sorrow for his friend Arthur Hallam and the ultimate consolation derived by him. In this connection, the name of the other two Victorians—Charles Carlyle and Goethe may also be suggested as the person indicated by the poet.
Also read; Critical appreciation of the poem ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold
Also read;Summary and Critical analysis of the poem The Lilly by William Blake