Poetry help! Matthew Arnold "Isolation: To Marguerite"?

Can someone please help me analyze these two stanzas?








31Or, if not quite alone, yet they


32Which touch thee are unmating things--


33Ocean and clouds and night and day;


34Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;


35And life, and others' joy and pain,


36And love, if love, of happier men.





37Of happier men--for they, at least,


38Have dream'd two human hearts might blend


39In one, and were through faith released


40From isolation without end


41Prolong'd; nor knew, although not less


42Alone than thou, their loneliness.





The entire poem can be found here. http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/93.h...





Thank you,

Poetry help! Matthew Arnold "Isolation: To Marguerite"?
As its title clearly indicates, it is a poem about...isolation. It is not known whether Marguerite was a real person or an imaginary character. Anyway, in these two last stanzas, Arnold is first defining this isolation or rather "near isolation" ("not quite alone") in a negative way, by associating his addressee to images of "unmating things": ocean / clouds; night / day; autumn / spring; joy / pain (series of antitheses). At the end of this list he places life and love, which means that for him isolation is everyone's lot.


Last stanza: love (that of "happier men", note that he does not write "happy": he is not defining absolute truths but only relative ones) is a "dream" (38), in which two hearts "might" blend. Happier men are not less isolated than Marguerite, but as they have had this "dream" of love, they are not conscious of their isolation ("nor knew, although not less / Alone than thou, their loneliness").


Beautiful poem, but very pessimistic.