Arnold's unfinished sentence: resignation as a rival freedom
Enough we live:--and if a life,
These are lines 259–262 of Matthew Arnold's ‘Resignation: To Fausta’, first published in The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849). The inspected witness is the Macmillan 1891 Poetical Works, transcribed by Project Gutenberg, pp. 60–61—not the first edition. It reads ‘Enough, we live!’ and ends Chesterton's extract with a semicolon, not a full stop. The vocabulary otherwise agrees. Publication history; poem and edition.
Chesterton stops inside a conditional sentence. Arnold continues by imagining that the landscape itself endures rather than rejoices; the poem ends by arguing that restless action cannot cure the world's underlying affliction. Earlier, however, resignation promises release from private struggles into a larger life, mental quiet and freedom from dependence on fortune. This is a proposed liberation, not simply weary indecision. Chesterton's next paragraph reverses its direction: he wants stronger delight and stronger dissatisfaction, whereas Arnold seeks freedom through moderating passionate expectations. The omitted continuation supports Chesterton's identification of endurance as the ideal, but the preceding argument makes the disagreement sharper: two competing accounts of how attachment and freedom belong together. ‘Resignation’, especially pp. 59–61.
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