“Requiescat” by Matthew Arnold

I was reading about the famous poet and critic Matthew Arnold recently, and I discovered that he died of sudden heart failure while running to catch a tram. While this is of course tragic, I also had to appreciate the symbolism of it: we think we know what direction we’re headed, and yet, when it comes down to it, we really don’t. Interestingly, this incident is somewhat reminiscent of a poem of his, called “Requiescat.” It centers on a woman whose life requires a lot of energy, but who really just longs to rest:

Strew on her roses, roses,

And never a spray of yew.

In quiet she reposes:

Ah! would that I did too.

Her mirth the world required:

She bathed it in smiles of glee.

But her heart was tired, tired,

And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,

In mazes of heat and sound.

But for peace her soul was yearning,

And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin’d, ample Spirit,

It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.

To-night it doth inherit

The vasty hall of Death.

Arnold makes a point of starkly contrasting the different states in this poem. The words that describe the woman’s life are all frantic, like in the line, “Her life was turning, turning,/In mazes of heat and sound” (9-10). The repetition of “turning” expresses the ceaseless movement of the things in her life, and “mazes of heat and sound” conveys the confusion and complexity of all the different aspects of her life mixing together at once. Arnold also uses diction that communicates a sort of “forcing” on life’s part: “Her mirth the world required:/She bathed it in smiles of glee” (5-6). The world needed her to be jovial all the time, and she fulfilled this duty well, “bath[ing]” it in happy smiles. But this is a kind of coercion for the woman, and the amount of energy she exerts seems to exhaust her, as shown in line 7, “But her heart was tired, tired.” She is not acting this way of her own free will, at least not anymore. It is simply what she feels she has to do.

The final four lines use this contrasting as well, when they juxtapose “Her cabin’d, ample Spirit” (13) and “The vasty hall of Death” (16). In life, the woman’s soul felt confined and trapped, but in death it is free, “inherit[ing]” (15) the wide open space, or “vasty hall,” that death offers. The woman’s spirit no longer struggles for breath. Now, it is able to breathe a big sigh of relief.

Arnold writes about death in a positive way, and paints it as a form of relaxation. He states such things as, “In quiet she reposes” (3), “And now they let her be” (8), and “…now peace laps her round” (12). All of these lines depict a calm and restful state; she is not bothered by anyone, and she finally gets the relief she wanted, since, as Arnold declares, “…for peace her soul was yearning” (11). It’s also significant that the narrator envies the woman, crying: “Ah! would that I did too” (4), when he mentions the woman’s resting. He shows that death is in fact a state to be envied, not one to be feared or resented. And whether the poem’s narrator is Matthew Arnold or not, the poet ended up getting his own tranquil sleep in the end.