Browsing from back to front through a Victorian anthology, I paused recently over two old favorites: first Matthew Arnold's “Dover Beach,” and then Clough's “Say not the struggle nought availeth.” It occurred to me that there must be a direct relation between the two poems. Clough's lines, affirmative and challenging, sounded like a response to the melancholy poem by his friend. Examining the texts more closely, I found Clough's argument and imagery to be so relevant to Arnold's that I could hardly think of the parallel as fortuitous. On considering the probable dates of composition, I discovered no evidence against the theory that “Say not” may have been Clough's reply to “Dover Beach.”