is doing 2 things in the poem:
--chronicling & lamenting the loss of faith
-seeking a substitute, here the possibility of human love for another individual
-firmly believed that Christianity was dead
--his knowledge and investigation of such mid-Victorian intellectual trends as the Higher Criticism of the Bible and quasi-historical concerns about the historical Jesus had convinced him that a reasonable man could no longer believe in Christianity. -YET- Arnold's heart and instincts told him, not that Christianity ought to survive, but that humankind desires and indeed must have something in which to believe in order to trul
