The speaker is in love and wished to remain so. He longed for her and wanted to only miss her and not open himself up to others, “I bade my heart be more constant” and “grow a home for only thee”. Being away from his love for so long though has made him shut his heart away from others and grow lonely, “The heart can bide itself away” Through that, he still retains his love of this woman and only this woman, “and thou, thou lonely heart,//Which never yet without remorse//Even for a moment didst depart//From thy remote and sphered course//To haunt the place where passions reign” He compares his love not with one passionate and outlasting time, but with one notoriously unrequited. “Back with the conscious thrill of shame//When Luna felt, that summer night…When she forsook the starry heights//To hang over Endymion’s sleep” The speaker has no real hope for his love to be returned to him. “Or, if not quite alone, yet they//Which touch thee are unmating things-//Ocean and clouds and night and day” Then in the second part, the speaker compares life to the sea, “Yes! In the sea of life enisled,//With echoing straits between us thrown” He and the woman he loves are on opposite sides, even going as far as to say that all people are alone, “We mortal millions live alone.//The islands feel the enclasping flow,//And then their endless bounds they know.” These islands, us or our very souls, still recall being a part of a whole, though, and long to return to it. “For surely once, they feel, we were//Parts of a single continent!” This is like his longing to be one with his love, though again, he knows he never can be because of essentially the grace of God.
“Who ordered that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?-
A God, a God their severance rules!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.”
John Donne's Meditation 17--"No man is an iland?" Hear a contrary echo of this here? Why do you think Arnold did this?
Where Donne felt that man was not alone, "All mankind is of one author and is one volume", Arnold felt the opposite. Almost absolutely opposite, which is why I think he might have used this sea and island reference. Though he didn't mention the island sentiment as much as in "Dover Beach", but the separation by the sea and the yearning for them to rejoin as if from "one continent" are still calling up the same images. I think he did this because Donna gave a strong message, "No man is an island" is still well known even today.
What do you think of the speaker Arnold creates here?
The speaker is longing and it's sweet, but sad. He loves so strongly, but he's content to just long after this woman for the rest of his days. I'd much rather read this than experience it or know someone who does.
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