Summary of Matthew Arnold's A Summer Night

            Matthew Arnold is a famous Victorian poet.  His works talk about human life as been spoilt by industries and modernization.  The poem A Summer Night is about the poet’s hatred with human living.  Matthew Arnold finds expression for his troubled feelings, which oscillates between betterment and human fallacy.

            The poet walks alone in a street.  The sound of his feet is echoed to him.  There is absolute stillness around him.  The windows of the houses in the street are all shut.  There is no one to care for the lonely poet.   The windows frown at him.  Moon could be seen between the housetops.  There is heaven behind the moon.

            The poet thinks of similar situation he experienced during the past, wherein he was standing in seashore.  The shore had mountains surrounding it.  The poet had moon as his company even during his past loneliness.  There are three things in common in the past and the present – the moon, the vain throbs of his heart and his restless mind that is moving to and fro.

            In his present, the poet imagines as if the moon is talking to him.  The moon asks the poet why he is still restless as he was in the past.  His heart neither dies nor gives the fiery glow.  It fluctuates to and fro between the passion and the benumbed thought of the world.

            As an answer the poet says that, he do not know how to react to the materialistic world.  The world has two kinds of people.  The first kind of people are those who work and work till the end of their life.  These people are said to live in a prison.  The poet condemns them for not coming out of their prison and relish the world out.  They toil until they become old.  The time when they retire and think of the life they have lost death comes to them.  Their life ends with nothingness.

            The second kinds of people are people who escape from the prison sort of life.  They are said to come out the prison and enjoy life outside.  They try to start life anew at a later stage of their life.  They also suffer because their new life brings them lot of challenges and sorrows.  They would suffer a lot.  The poet explains this with the metaphor of sailing in a sea.  These people face lot of storms and tempests and end their life by sinking in the miseries and empty-handed.

            The poet expresses his anger by asking questions.  He pities human predicament which allows him to choose life either of mad man or of a slave.  The poet seeks to live a better live, which is equivalent to the life at heaven.  He is willing to live a life of transparency and clearness which would make human life better in earth.