Arthur Hugh Clough (1819 – 1861)

Margaret Drabble on “Say not the struggle naught availeth”

This poem by Arthur Hugh Clough unfailingly brings tears to my eyes. It speaks of hope, and effort, and disappointment, and per- severance. As I read it, it is a poem about social hope, about hope for humanity. Most of my political hopes have been, in my lifetime, disappointed, but this poem tells us not to lose faith. The imagery is profoundly beautiful, and reminds me of the great beaches of my childhood, of Wordsworth’s immortal shore. I can feel those ‘tired waves, vainly breaking’, and then the flooding fullness of the sea. The double movement, the double crescendo of redemption in those last two stanzas, of sea and of light, is astonishingly affecting.

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