"A Superscription," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"No Worst, There Is None," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

"My Day" (from MAUD), by Tennyson

"Poets and Critics," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Clough (Rhymes With Tough) and Ten Revised Commandments

Here's a poem from 1862 that seems to resonate nicely in 2007; the poem presents a revised version of the Ten Commandments:

The Latest Decalogue

by Arthur Hugh Clough

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for for they curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

The sum of all is, thou shalt love,
If any body, God above:
At any rate shall never labour
More than thyself to love thy neighbour.

from Victorian Poetry: Clough to Kipling, edited by Arthur J. Carr (2nd edition), New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1972), pp. 25-26.

Clough--pronounced "Cluff"--experienced something of a classic Victorian crisis of spirituality. The Victorians, at least those who had time to think about things, had to contend with Origin of Species (1859), which indirectly called into question a literal reception of the Bible's report about how Creation came to be, and they had to contend with what was known as the "Higher Criticism" of the Bible--an approach that was more historical than theological. Such criticism was symbolized by a biography of Jesus written by a German named Strauss. The very idea of approaching Jesus an as historical figure was, understandably, a blow to conventional theology.

Clough was at Oxford when some of this tumult occurred, and the tumult included the Oxford Movement, a kind of struggle between Anglicanism and Catholicism. Thereafter, Clough had trouble accepting traditional dogma, but he also developed a sour view of a world that seemed to have no spiritual anchorage, so "The Latest Decalogue" satirically derides a morality of convenience.

The lines about "graven images" make me think of debates about whether to keep "In God We Trust" on American currency. I'm pretty sure Clough would argue that the debate--regardless of which side one takes--is beside the point. It's the money, not the slogan, that's being worshipped, so who cares what's printed on the money? The poem cautions against cursing, but only from a practical standpoint: we're in a modern age now when curses don't work, so don't waste your energy. Yes, it's still a good idea not to kill anybody, but don't go out of your way to prevent others from killing others. This made me think of how I did almost nothing to try to stop the U.S. from invading Iraq and thereby killing thousands of Iraqi citizens and getting thousands of Americans killed or wounded. As with cursing, adultery is still a bad idea, but only because of practical concerns, suggests the poem. Honor your parents--and anybody else who's in power and can help you get ahead. Don't covet, but continue to compete like a maniac in the economy of capital and laissez faire. Clough wrote when England was, arguably, at the height of its colonial prowess, so there is a sense in which England coveted all the world's goods, just as the U.S. seems to covet all the world's markets and most of the world's inexpensive labor. But fear not: we are a Judeo-Christian nation! Of course we don't covet! And we may not hate our neighbors, Clough suggests, but it's imperative to love yourself more than anybody else. Take care of Number One.

Clough was good friends with Matthew Arnold, author of the famous (and well parodied) "Dover Beach." Oddly enough, although Clough was born in England, he spent his early years in the U.S.--in Charleston, South Carolina--before returning to England to go to school. He came back to the U.S.--to New England--in 1852 and got to know Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow (see the brief biography in the Rinehart edition cited). Unfortunately, he contracted tuberculosis, and he died in Italy in 1861 (he was born in 1819). So "The Latest Decalogue" was published posthumously.

A side note: I think it may have been George Bernard Shaw who observed that all you need to do to realize how difficult English is to learn as a second language is to think about how differently such words as "enough," "though," and "slough" (and Clough) are supposed to be pronounced. A second side note: I can almost never think of the Ten Commandments without thinking of Mel Brooks's schtick wherein he plays Moses, who walks out from behind a rock with two stone tablets and proclaims that he has 20 commandments--then he drops one tablet, which breaks--then he recovers and says "make that TEN commandments"--to proclaim. Clough's humor is a little more subtle, to say the least, than Mel's.