Explore "To the Duke of Wellington" by Matthew Arnold on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On Hearing Him Mispraised / Because thou hast believ'd, the wheels of life / Stand never idle, but go always round: / Not by their hands, who vex the patient ground, / Mov'd only; but by genius, in the strife / Of all its chafing torrents after thaw, / Urg'd; and to feed whose movement, spinning sand, / The feeble sons of pleasure set their hand: / And, in this vision of the general law, / Hast labour'd with the foremost, hast become / Laborious, persevering, serious, firm; / For this, thy track, across the fretful foam / Of vehement actions without scope or term, / Call'd History, keeps a splendour: due to wit, / Which saw one clue to life, and follow'd it.