Gladly they rise at his call;
Gladly they take his command;
Gladly descend to the plain.
Alas! How few of them all—
Those willing servants—shall stand
In their Master's presence again!
Some in the tumult are lost:
Baffled, bewilder'd, they stray.
Some as prisoners draw breath.
Others—the bravest—are cross'd,
On the height of their bold-follow'd way,
By the swift-rushing missile of Death.
Hardly, hardly shall one
Come, with countenance bright,
O'er the cloud-wrapt, perilous plain:
His Master's errand well done,
Safe through the smoke of the fight,
Back to his Master again.
The question of who the “Men of Genius” truly are is never explicitly resolved. The word “man” cannot refer to non-human beings, so God’s “own” presumably fall outside of this category–in either case, there is little genial or glorious about their self-destructing intervention. Yet the people themselves are even further away from the ideal, and so the title may appear to be intended ironically–arguably cynically, misanthropically. 
 Another interpretation can be formed by taking Thackeray’s addition to the same issue of this magazine into account:  “Vanitas Vanitatum”  (since he was editor of  The Cornhill Magazine , he would have been the one to select Arnold’s poem). When juxtaposed, both works seem to be dealing with the same issue: men pursuing futile, even harmful, delusions instead of divine grace and virtue. 
 From this perspective, the “of” in “Men of Genius” may not be pointing towards the possessed, but rather to the possessor. In other words: the “Men” do not embody “Genius,” but “Genius” or God–the opposite of vanity as implied in Thackeray’s poem–gave rise to them instead. Arnold’s piece then points to mankind’s latent potential, denied by their pursuit of “Vanitas Vanitatum” and the neglect of spirituality it brings about.
Men of Genius