Poem in Your Pocket Day - April 26

Here's the poem that will be in my pocket tomorrow for Poem in Your Pocket Day:

The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold : The Poetry Foundation

It's one of my favorites, which probably reveals more about me than I care to acknowledge. It certainly helps to demonstrate my preoccupation with Victorian British literature as it wrestled into a challenging new world, one of materialism and metropolism (NOTE: I was going for "urbanization" but decided I liked the alliteration, even though "metropolism" isn't really a word), one that threatened to distance people from nature and from each other.

I love so many lines in this poem...and, while I wouldn't list this one among them, I love that Arnold's line near the end "And then he thinks he knows" doesn't allow readers the comfort of thinking we can truly find closure and connection...we only think we can.