Matthew Arnold was born Christmas Eve (1822), the son of the innovative headmaster of the Rugby School, Thomas Arnold. Matthew won recognition for his poetry while a student at Rugby, completed his undergraduate degree at the esteemed Oxford University where he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem entitled Cromwell, then returned to Rugby where he taught the classics.

After seven years in the classroom, Arnold assumed the role of a government school inspector. He would serve in that role for the next 35 years. He firmly established himself as a poet with "Empedocles on Etna" in 1852 and "Poems" in 1853.

His reputation as poet led to his assuming a part-time role as Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1857 to 1867 where he would become the first professor at Oxford to teach his classes in English as opposed to Latin. During that period, he wrote many of his famous literary criticisms, including "Essays in Criticism" published in 1865 and "Culture and Anarchy" in 1869.

Arnold's poems often dealt with the topic of psychological isolation and contrasted with Donne's famous assertion, "No man is an island." His influence on other poets was extensive, with his work reflected in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Sylvia Plath.

Arnold's works include the "Barbarians" and the "Philistines," essays that criticized the tastes and manners of the aristocracy and the commercial middle class respectively. As when writing his poetry, Arnold's impact was extensive, and his style of essay writing is reflected in the works of both T.S.Eliot and Harold Bloom.

Arnold died in Liverpool in 1888.

Youth and Calm

'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so liht,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it hath the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tob?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath--
Youth dreams a bliss on this ide death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.