Despite the isolation Arnold describes on a larger scale—that of groups of people, “ignorant armies” rather than individuals—his speaker seems to find and profess comfort in the existence of love. Part of the poem may even have been written during or just after Arnold’s own honeymoon in 1851, though its dates of composition are contested. Regardless, the poem’s sense of another person, which is clear from the imperative “Listen!” and individual address to “you” in its first stanza, gives Arnold’s speaker a witness, someone to hold his descriptions of what he feels and sees. This love serves as an individual consolation even in the wastes of contemporaneous Britain’s failures of faith. In another direct address, the speaker cries out at the beginning of the poem’s last stanza:

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another!

—and he affirms that “we are here” in the world, despite the desolation of the “darkling plain” on which they stand, the plural pronoun offering some small solace even in that darkness. This love is enduring and grounding, and it is enough to withstand a world that is rapidly shifting around the speaker.