Explore "To George Cruikshank, Esq" by Matthew Arnold on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On Seeing for the First Time His Picture of The Bottle, in the Country / Artist, whose hand, with horror wing'd, hath torn / From the rank life of towns this leaf: and flung / The prodigy of full-blown crime among / Valleys and men to middle fortune born, / Not innocent, indeed, yet not forlorn: / Say, what shall calm us, when such guests intrude, / Like comets on the heavenly solitude?
Shall breathless glades, cheer'd by shy Dian's horn, / Cold-bubbling springs, or caves? Not so! The Soul / Breasts her own griefs: and, urg'd too fiercely, says: / "Why tremble? True, the nobleness of man / May be by man effac'd: man can control / To pain, to death, the bent of his own days.
Know thou the worst! So much, not more, he can. "