Arthur Hugh Clough

Duty (Clough)

Duty that’s to say, complying,
With whate’er’s expected here;
On your unknown cousin’s dying,
Straight be ready with the tear;
Upon etiquette relying,
Unto usage nought denying,
Lend your waist to be embraced,
Blush not even, never fear;
Claims of kith and kin connection,
Claims of manners honour still,

Financial metaphor

**Ready money** = cash on hand. Clough treats social affection like currency you pay out automatically, regardless of who demands it.

Ready money of affection
Pay, whoever drew the bill.
With the form conforming duly,
Senseless what it meaneth truly,
Go to church the world require you,
To balls the world require you too,
And marry papa and mamma desire you,
And your sisters and schoolfellows do.
Duty ’tis to take on trust
What things are good, and right, and just;
And whether indeed they be or be not,
Try not, test not, feel not, see not:

Triple negation

**Try not, test not, feel not, see not**—four prohibitions in a row, building rhythm. Notice how the meter speeds up here, cramming in commands.

’Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise
By leading, opening ne’er your eyes;
Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave,

Bath chair

A wheeled invalid's chair, pushed by attendants—used by the elderly and infirm in spa towns like Bath. You're literally being pushed through life, never using your own legs.

And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave.
’Tis the stern and prompt suppressing,
As an obvious deadly sin,
All the questing and the guessing
Of the souls own soul within:
’Tis the coward acquiescence
In a destiny’s behest,
To a shade by terror made,
Sacrificing, aye, the essence
Of all that’s truest, noblest, best:
’Tis the blind non-recognition
Or of goodness, truth, or beauty,
Save by precept and submission;
Moral blank, and moral void,
Life at very birth destroyed.
Atrophy, exinanition!

Medical terms

**Atrophy** = wasting away of tissue; **exinanition** = complete exhaustion/emptying out. Clough diagnoses social conformity as a physical disease.

The paradox

**Pure nonentity of duty** = duty that's so fake it cancels itself out. The poem's final argument: false duty isn't duty at all.

Duty!
Yea, by duty’s prime condition
Pure nonentity of duty!

The paradox

**Pure nonentity of duty** = duty that's so fake it cancels itself out. The poem's final argument: false duty isn't duty at all.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Anti-Victorian Rant

CONTEXT Clough (1819-1861) resigned his Oxford fellowship in 1848 over religious doubts—he couldn't sign the Thirty-Nine Articles in good conscience. This poem is his manifesto against conformity for conformity's sake, written by someone who paid a real career price for his principles.

The poem's structure is a fake definition. It pretends to explain "Duty" but actually defines its opposite: social performance. Notice how the first half catalogs specific social obligations (funerals, church, balls, marriage), while the second half zooms out to the philosophical damage. The turn happens at line 19: "Duty 'tis to take on trust"—now he's not just listing behaviors but diagnosing the mental surrender behind them.

Watch the financial language: "ready money of affection," "whoever drew the bill." Victorian society ran on complex social debts and obligations. Clough treats this economy as fundamentally fraudulent—you're paying out feelings you don't have, honoring drafts you never signed. The metaphor suggests these aren't moral obligations at all, just transactions.

What Gets Destroyed

The poem's real subject appears late: "the souls own soul within" (line 31). Clough argues that false duty doesn't just waste your time—it kills the core self, the part that questions and chooses. Notice the progression: first you're physically disabled ("Stunt sturdy limbs"), then mentally passive ("blind non-recognition"), finally spiritually dead ("Life at very birth destroyed").

"Moral blank, and moral void"—Clough distinguishes between following rules and being moral. If you never question what's good, you can't actually *be* good. You're just obedient. The medical terms at the end (atrophy, exinanition) make conformity a wasting disease, something that empties you out from inside.

The final paradox is elegant: this kind of "duty" violates "duty's prime condition"—the requirement that duty be chosen, not coerced. A duty you perform in terror, without understanding, isn't a duty. It's "pure nonentity," a nothing pretending to be something. Clough spent his career wrestling with what real moral obligation looks like; this poem clears the ground by showing what it's not.