Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) is best remembered for his critical essays, but I feel he was among the best poets of his era.

His famous critical works, including Essays in Criticism and Culture and Anarchy, The Function of Criticism, and The Study of Poetry, establish him as a great thinker.

My favorite Arnold poem is the musical “Dover Beach,” but I am sharing “A Wish” here. It is a melancholic poem that reminds us of the value of life and how to prepare for death. I summarize it as a manifesto on the art of dying well.

Keep reading—

 I ask not that my bed of death 
 From bands of greedy heirs be free; 
 For these besiege the latest breath 
 Of fortune's favoured sons, not me. 
 
 I ask not each kind soul to keep 
 Tearless, when of my death he hears; 
 Let those who will, if any, weep! 
 There are worse plagues on earth than tears. 
 
 I ask but that my death may find 
 The freedom to my life denied; 
 Ask but the folly of mankind, 
 Then, at last, to quit my side. 
 
 Spare me the whispering, crowded room, 
 The friends who come, and gape, and go; 
 The ceremonious air of gloom - 
 All which makes death a hideous show! 
 
 Nor bring, to see me cease to live, 
 Some doctor full of phrase and fame, 
 To shake his sapient head and give 
 The ill he cannot cure a name. 
 
 Nor fetch, to take the accustomed toll 
 Of the poor sinner bound for death, 
 His brother doctor of the soul, 
 To canvass with official breath 
 
 The future and its viewless things - 
 That undiscovered mystery 
 Which one who feels death's winnowing wings 
 Must need read clearer, sure, than he! 
 
 Bring none of these; but let me be, 
 While all around in silence lies, 
 Moved to the window near, and see 
 Once more before my dying eyes 
 
 Bathed in the sacred dew of morn 
 The wide aerial landscape spread - 
 The world which was ere I was born, 
 The world which lasts when I am dead. 
 
 Which never was the friend of one, 
 Nor promised love it could not give, 
 But lit for all its generous sun, 
 And lived itself, and made us live. 
 
 There let me gaze, till I become 
 In soul with what I gaze on wed! 
 To feel the universe my home; 
 To have before my mind -instead 
 
 Of the sick-room, the mortal strife, 
 The turmoil for a little breath - 
 The pure eternal course of life, 
 Not human combatings with death. 
 
 Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow 
 Composed, refreshed, ennobled, clear; 
 Then willing let my spirit go 
 To work or wait elsewhere or here!