The regret for something beautiful that is gone is capable of exquisite poetic treatment, but it is not an abiding note of the century. It represents only one phase of its thought, and that a transcient one, because it could be felt with poignancy only by those whose lives were rudely shaken by the destruction of the ideal in which they had been bred and in which they devoutly believed. Arnold's sympathetic treatment of this phase of doubt seems, however, to have been of incalculable service to those who felt as he did. It softened the anguish of the shock to have not only the beauty of the past dwelt upon, but to have the beauty of courage in the face of a destroyed ideal erected into a new ideal for living brave and noble lives. In "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" is a fine example of the beauty which may be imparted to a mood as melancholy as could well be imagined: "Not as their friend, or child, I speak! But as, on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek In pity and mournful awe might stand Before some fallen Runic stone-- For both were faiths, and both are gone. "Wandering between two worlds, one dead The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn, Their faith, my tears, the world deride-- I come to shed them at their side." Such hope as he has to offer comes out in stanzas like the following, but all is dependent upon strenuous living: "No, no! the energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun; And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing--only he, His soul well-knit, and all his battle won, Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life." Nor shall better days on earth come without struggle since life "Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high Uno'erleaped Mountains of Necessity, Sparing us narrower margin than we deem. Nor will that day dawn at a human nod, When, bursting through the network, superposed By selfish occupation--plot and plan, Lust, avarice, envy-liberated man, All difference with his fellow-mortal closed, Shall be left standing face to face with God." Though Arnold was sternly criticised he had before the end of the century been accorded his proper place as a poet, which was that of the chief poet between the greatest lights of the century, Browning and Tennyson and the pre-Raphaelite group. Gosse, with more penetration than can always be accorded to him, declares that "His devotion to beauty, the composure, simplicity and dignity of his temper, and his deep moral sincerity gave to his poetry a singular charm which may prove as durable as any element in modern verse."