Arthur Clough's poem "Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth" was first published under the title "The Struggle" in an American art journal, The Crayon, in 1855. Many critics assume that it refers to the failure of liberal reforms in France and Italy in the late 1840s.
The poem consists of 16 lines organized into four open quatrains, each rhymed ABAB. The poem's meter is iambic tetrameter, with frequent metrical variations and several feminine rhymes.
The themes and some of the phrasing of the poem are taken from the Bible, specifically:
And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9)
The theme of the Biblical passage in the poem is that one must persist in a struggle for what one knows is right even if the end goal seems distant or one endures various setbacks. It compares human struggles to a tide that recedes but advances again and suggests that even if one sees no immediate results from one's actions, they still may have effects one cannot immediately perceive.
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