Besides "Tristram and Iseult," we select for especial mention out of this second volume, "A Farewell," "Self-Dependence," "Morality "; two very highly-finished pieces called "The Youth of Nature," and "The Youth of Man," expressing two opposite states of feeling, which we all of us recognize, and yet which, as far as we know, have never before found their way into language; and "A Summer Night," a small meditative poem, containing one passage, which, although not perfect--for, if the metre had been more exact, the effect would, in our opinion, have been very much enhanced--is, nevertheless, the finest that Mr. Arnold has yet written. And I. I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield and be Like all the other men I see. For most men in a brazen prison live, Where in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their minds to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison wall; And as, year after year, Fresh products of their barren labour fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast, And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, Death in their prison reaches them Unfreed, having seen nothing still unblest. And the rest, a few, Escape their prison, and depart On the wide ocean of life anew. There the freed prisoner, where'er his heart Listeth, will sail; Nor does he know how there prevail, Despotic on life's sea, Trade winds that cross it from eternity. Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him, and between The lightning bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and flying hair, Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom, Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman loom." In these lines, in powerful and highly-sustained metaphor, lies the full tragedy of modern life. "Is there no life but these alone, Madman or slave, must man be one?"