On a Darkling Plain

Speaking the deepest and truest thoughts of humankind in the language available only to the gifted, the Victorian poets elected to do more than merely sing as versifiers. By coming to grips with thorny contemporary issues and suggesting workable solutions, they struggled to lead their people out of the wilderness. Tennyson, who came to be known as the voice of Victorianism, is the poet most often credited with this ambition. But Matthew Arnold and the other major poets had a similar aim. Their poems, while not devoid of feeling, are charged with the main currents of social, scientific, religious, and philosophical thought. Interwoven and resonating in sensuous song is their own thought. The best of the poetry fits the word and thought to the troubling developments of the time and rises to a prophecy to predict the problems of our time.


James Haydock earned a Ph.D. in Victorian Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Later he did research, wrote, and taught as a professor of English in the University of Wisconsin. After retirement he published 'Portraits in Charcoal: George Gissing's Women' (a biographical study), 'Stormbirds' (a novel), and 'Victorian Sages' (on the prose of the period). His current book, 'On a Darkling Plain,' is a meticulous study of Victorian poetry and thought.