Arthur Hugh Clough

Bethesda

A Sequel
I saw again the spirits on a day,
Where on the earth in mournful case they lay;
Five porches were there, and a pool, and round,
Huddling in blankets, strewn upon the ground,
Tied-up and bandaged, weary, sore and spent,
The maimed and halt, diseased and impotent.
For a great angel came, ’twas said, and stirred
The pool at certain seasons, and the word
Was, with this people of the sick, that they
Who in the waters here their limbs should lay
Before the motion on the surface ceased
Should of their torment straightway be released.
So with shrunk bodies and with heads down-dropt,
Stretched on the steps, and at the pillars propt,

The waiting becomes the sickness

The sick aren't just physically disabled—they're trapped in passive hope, watching and listening through the night. The waiting itself is torment, not just the disease.

Watching by day and listening through the night,
They filled the place, a miserable sight.

The waiting becomes the sickness

The sick aren't just physically disabled—they're trapped in passive hope, watching and listening through the night. The waiting itself is torment, not just the disease.

And I beheld that on the stony floor

The man who spoke of duty

This is the poem's pivot: Clough introduces someone who previously had moral certainty ('spoke of duty once before') now stripped of it. He's lost the language that once sustained him.

He too, that spoke of duty once before,
No otherwise than others here to-day,
Foredone and sick and sadly muttering lay.
‘I know not, I will do what is it I would say?
What was that word which once sufficed alone for all,
Which now I seek in vain, and never can recall?’
And then, as weary of in vain renewing
His question, thus his mournful thought pursuing,
‘I know not, I must do as other men are doing.’
But what the waters of that pool might be,
Of Lethe were they, or Philosophy;

Philosophy as false cure

Clough names two possible sources of healing: Lethe (oblivion/forgetting) or Philosophy. Both are human solutions—not divine intervention. He's questioning whether thought or escape can actually heal doubt.

And whether he, long waiting, did attain
Deliverance from the burden of his pain
There with the rest; or whether, yet before,
Some more diviner stranger passed the door
With his small company into that sad place,
And, breathing hope into the sick man’s face,
Bade him take up his bed, and rise and go,

Refusal to resolve

Clough explicitly withholds the ending. He won't say whether the man found healing through waiting, through philosophy, or through a 'diviner stranger' (Christ). The poem ends in uncertainty—which is the point.

What the end were, and whether it were so,
Further than this I saw not, neither know

Refusal to resolve

Clough explicitly withholds the ending. He won't say whether the man found healing through waiting, through philosophy, or through a 'diviner stranger' (Christ). The poem ends in uncertainty—which is the point.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Clough's Crisis of Faith and Language

CONTEXT Clough wrote this in the 1850s during a period of intense religious doubt. He'd left Oxford and the church, wrestling with whether Victorian certainty—both religious and philosophical—could survive honest questioning. This poem is not a straightforward Biblical narrative but a modern crisis of meaning dressed in Biblical costume.

The 'man who spoke of duty' is Clough's central figure: someone who once had a coherent moral language ('that word which once sufficed alone for all') but has lost it. Notice he can't even articulate what he's lost—his speech becomes grammatically broken ('I know not, I will do what is it I would say?'). This isn't metaphorical. Clough is showing that when faith collapses, the very syntax of thought breaks down. You can't think clearly without the vocabulary your culture gave you.

The poem's genius is that it refuses to offer a replacement. The waters might be Lethe (forgetting your pain) or Philosophy (thinking your way through it), but Clough won't commit to either. He won't even tell us if the sick man gets healed—whether by waiting, by philosophy, or by Christ appearing. The ambiguity isn't evasiveness; it's honesty. For Clough and his readers, there was no clear answer anymore.

Why This Matters as a 'Sequel'

The subtitle 'A Sequel' signals that this isn't the Biblical story—it's what happens after. Clough is asking: what if the healing at Bethesda didn't actually solve the problem? What if the sick man got well but lost his capacity to believe? What if modern doubt is worse than physical paralysis?

Read the poem as Clough's response to Victorian optimism. His contemporaries believed in progress, moral improvement, and rational solutions. Clough shows a scene of collective waiting—masses of sick people hoping for automatic deliverance—and then introduces a man who has already tried the old answers and found them insufficient. The poem's refusal to provide a resolution is itself the argument: there is no automatic deliverance from doubt. You have to live in the uncertainty.