Explore "The Second Best" by Matthew Arnold on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Moderate tasks and moderate leisure, / Quiet living, strict-kept measure / Both in suffering and in pleasure --
'Tis for this thy nature yearns.
But so many books thou readest, / But so many schemes thou breedest, / But so many wishes feedest, / That thy poor head almost turns.
And (the world's so madly jangled, / Human things so fast entangled)
Nature's wish must now be strangled / For that best which she discerns.
So it must be! yet, while leading / A strain'd life, while overfeeding, / Like the rest, his wit with reading, / No small profit that man earns, / Who through all he meets can steer him, / Can reject what cannot clear him, / Cling to what can truly cheer him!
Who each day more surely learns / That an impulse, from the distance / Of his deepest, best existence, / To the words, "Hope, Light, Persistence,"
Strongly stirs and truly burns!