Resolute
Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth
SAY not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making
Came silent, flooding in, the main,
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861) composed ‘Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth’ in 1849 in Rome, where he was escaping the orthodoxies of the Anglican Church and recovering from ill health. It is a deeply personal poem saturated with conflict and hopelessness, even though it is in some ways a bid to reconcile himself and his readers to the failure of the democratic cause in Rome and Europe as a whole after the revolutions of 1848.
