rst four lines? Discuss
l. 6. What is the import of the preacher's response? What are the
poet's conclusions drawn in ll. 9-14?

WEST LONDON

=1. Belgrave Square.= An important square in the western part of
London.

Tell the situation and the story of the poem. Why did the woman
solicit aid from the laboring men? Why not from the wealthy? Explain
ll. 9-11. What is the poet's final conclusion?

[196]
MEMORIAL VERSES

APRIL, 1850

Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, in the Lake, District, April 23, 1850.
These verses, dedicated to his memory, are among Arnold's best-known
lines. For adequacy of meaning and charm of expression, they are
almost unsurpassed; they also contain some of the poet's soundest
poetical criticism. The poem was first published in _Fraser's
Magazine_ for June, 1850, and bore the date of April 27.

=1. Goethe in Weimar sleeps.= The tomb of Goethe, the celebrated
German author (see note, l. 29, _Epilogue to Lessing's Laocooen_), is
in Weimar, the capital of the Grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar. Weimar is
noted as the literary centre of Germany, and for this reason is styled
the German Athens.

=2. Byron.= George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), a celebrated English poet
of the French Revolutionary period, died at Missolonghi, Greece, where
he had gone to help the Greeks in their struggle to throw off the
Turkish yoke. He was preeminently a poet of passion, and, as such,
exerted a marked influence on the literature of his day. His petulant,
bitter rebellion against all law has become proverbial; hence the
term "Byronic." The =Titans= (l. 14) were a race of giants who warred
against the gods. The aptness of the comparison made here is at once
evident. In Arnold's sonnet, _A Picture at Newstead_, also occur these
lines:--

"'Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry
Stormily sweet, his Titan-agony."

=17. iron age.= In classic mythology, "The last of the four great ages
of the world described by Hesiod. Ovid, etc. It was supposed to
be characterized by abounding oppression, vice, and misery."--
_International Dictionary_. The preceding ages, in order, were the
age of gold, the age of silver, and the age of brass. [197]

=34-39=. Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, was stung to death by a serpent,
and passed to the realm of the dead--Hades. Thither Orpheus descended,
and, by the charm of his lyre and song,