Explores select works of Matthew Arnold, as well as Robert Browning’s “Caliban Upon Setebos” and Edward Fitzgerald’s “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,” for evidence that societal growth during the late 19th-century was done not entirely in hopes of leaving previous authorities behind, of accepting and dealing with felt feelings of being abandoned for their focus on their own selves rather than parental ways; there was evidence of regression, clinging back. Poetry, I am suggesting in this short paper, began to manifest the parental imago in a manner that would either flatter their preferred self-image/conception and thereby be to their liking (with Arnold), or that would presumably draw back their presumably withdrawn attention and interest through newly aroused ire, placing the poet back into a mere bratty kid rather than introducer of the new (Browning, Fitzgerald).