Showing posts with label Matthew Arnold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew Arnold. Show all posts

Matthew Arnold: Poems Summary and Analysis of "The Scholar-Gipsy

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The speaker of "The Scholar-Gipsy" describes a beautiful rural setting in the pastures, with the town of Oxford lying in the distance. He watches the shepherd and reapers working amongst the field, and then tells the shepherd that he will remain out there until sundown, enjoying the scenery and studying the towers of Oxford. All the while, he will keep his book beside him.
His book tells the famous story by Joseph Glanvill, about an impoverished Oxford student who leaves his studies to join a band of gypsies. Once he was immersed within their community, he learned the secrets of their trade.
After a while, two of the Scholar-Gipsy's Oxford associates found him, and he told them about the traditional gypsy style of learning, which emphasizes powerful imagination. His plan was to remain with the gypsies until he learned everything he could, and then to tell their secrets to the world.
Regularly interjecting his own wonder into the telling, the speaker continues the scholar-gipsy's story. Every once in a while, people would claim to have seen him in the Berkshire moors. The speaker imagines him as a shadowy figure who is waiting for the "spark from heaven," just like everyone else on Earth is. The speaker even claims to have seen the scholar-gipsy himself once, even though it has been over two hundred years since his story first resonated through the halls of Oxford.
Despite that length of time, the speaker does not believe the scholar-gipsy could have died, since he had renounced the life of mortal man, including those things that wear men out to death: "repeated shocks, again, again/exhaust the energy of strongest souls." Having chosen to repudiate this style of life, the scholar-gipsy does not suffer from such "shocks," but instead is "free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt." He has escaped the perils of modern life, which are slowly creeping up and destroying men like a "strange disease."
The speaker finishes by imploring that the scholar-gipsy avoid everyone who suffers from this "disease," lest he become infected as well.

Analysis

Though this poem explores one of Arnold's signature themes - the depressing monotony and toil of modern life - it is unique in that it works through a narrative. There are in fact two levels of storytelling at work in the poem: that of the scholar-gipsy, and that of the speaker who is grappling with the ideas poised by that singular figure.
Both levels of story relay the same message: the scholar-gipsy has transcended life by escaping modern life. As he usually does, Arnold here criticizes modern life as wearing down even the strongest of men. His choice of the word "disease" is telling, since it implies that this lifestyle is contagious. Even those who try to avoid modern life will eventually become infected.
In this way, the poem makes a comment on the perils of conformity, as other poems in this collection do. What make the scholar-gipsy so powerful is not only that he wishes to avoid modern life - many wish to do that. More importantly, he is willing to entirely repudiate normal society for the sake of his transcendence. There is a slightly pessimistic worldview implicit in that idea, since it is clearly not possible to revel in true individuality and still be a part of society. The scholar-gipsy has had to turn his back entirely on Oxford, which represents learning and modernity here, in order to become this great figure. And yet the poem overall is much more optimistic than many of Arnold's works, precisely because it suggests that we can transcend if we are willing to pay that cost. This makes it different from a poem like "A Summer Night," which explores the same theme but laments the cost of separation that individuality requires.
For all his admiration, the speaker clearly has not yet mustered the strength to repudiate the world. The setting helps establish his contradictory feelings. The poem begins with images of peaceful, serene rural life, a place where men act as they always have. They have been untouched by the perils of modernity. Pastoral imagery has always been associated in poetry with a type of innocence and purity, unfiltered humanity in touch with nature. The speaker is out in the field contemplating this type of life, the possibility of acting as the scholar-gipsy did.
And yet he is also studying the towers of Oxford, which (as mentioned above) represents the rapidly changing, strictly structured world that the scholar-gipsy renounced. Arnold deftly expresses the speaker's split priorities through this juxtaposition. At the same time that he admires the scholar-gipsy, he cannot fully turn his back on the modern world. It is the same contradiction that plagues the speaker of "A Summer Night."
Thus, the poem overall represents Arnold's inner conflict, his desire to live a transcendent life but inability to totally eschew society. At this point in his life, Arnold felt pulled in different directions by the world's demands. He was trying to resist the infection of modernization, but it was creeping up on him nevertheless, and the pressure to conform was negatively affecting his poetry. Undoubtedly, Arnold wished he could escape in the way the scholar-gipsy did; however, he was too tied down by responsibilities to ever dream of doing so.


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The Scholar-Gipsy by Matthew Arnold

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Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; 
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! 
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, 
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, 
Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head. 
But when the fields are still, 
And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, 
And only the white sheep are sometimes seen 
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd green. 
Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest! 

Here, where the reaper was at work of late— 
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves 
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, 
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, 
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use— 
Here will I sit and wait, 
While to my ear from uplands far away 
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, 
With distant cries of reapers in the corn— 
All the live murmur of a summer's day. 

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, 
And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be. 
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, 
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see 
Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep; 
And air-swept lindens yield 
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers 
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, 
And bower me from the August sun with shade; 
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers. 

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book— 
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again! 
The story of the Oxford scholar poor, 
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, 
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, 
One summer-morn forsook 
His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore, 
And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood, 
And came, as most men deem'd, to little good, 
But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 

But once, years after, in the country-lanes, 
Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, 
Met him, and of his way of life enquired; 
Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew, 
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired 
The workings of men's brains, 
And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. 
"And I," he said, "the secret of their art, 
When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; 
But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill." 

This said, he left them, and return'd no more.— 
But rumours hung about the country-side, 
That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, 
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, 
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, 
The same the gipsies wore. 
Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; 
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, 
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors 
Had found him seated at their entering, 

But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly. 
And I myself seem half to know thy looks, 
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace; 
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks 
I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place; 
Or in my boat I lie 
Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer-heats, 
'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills, 
And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills, 
And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats. 

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground! 
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe, 
Returning home on summer-nights, have met 
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, 
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, 
As the punt's rope chops round; 
And leaning backward in a pensive dream, 
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers 
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, 
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. 

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!— 
Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come 
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, 
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, 
Or cross a stile into the public way. 
Oft thou hast given them store 
Of flowers—the frail-leaf'd, white anemony, 
Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves, 
And purple orchises with spotted leaves— 
But none hath words she can report of thee. 

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here 
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, 
Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass 
Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, 
To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass, 
Have often pass'd thee near 
Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown; 
Mark'd thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, 
Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air— 
But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone! 

At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills, 
Where at her open door the housewife darns, 
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate 
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. 
Children, who early range these slopes and late 
For cresses from the rills, 
Have known thee eyeing, all an April-day, 
The springing pasture and the feeding kine; 
And mark'd thee, when the stars come out and shine, 
Through the long dewy grass move slow away. 

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood— 
Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged way 
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see 
With scarlet patches tagg'd and shreds of grey, 
Above the forest-ground called Thessaly— 
The blackbird, picking food, 
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all; 
So often has he known thee past him stray, 
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray, 
And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall. 

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill 
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, 
Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge, 
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, 
Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge? 
And thou has climb'd the hill, 
And gain'd the white brow of the Cumner range; 
Turn'd once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall, 
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall— 
Then sought thy straw in some sequester'd grange. 

But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flown 
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls, 
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe 
That thou wert wander'd from the studious walls 
To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe; 
And thou from earth art gone 
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid— 
Some country-nook, where o'er thy unknown grave 
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave, 
Under a dark, red-fruited yew-tree's shade. 

—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours! 
For what wears out the life of mortal men? 
'Tis that from change to change their being rolls; 
'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, 
Exhaust the energy of strongest souls 
And numb the elastic powers. 
Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, 
And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, 
To the just-pausing Genius we remit 
Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been. 

Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so? 
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire; 
Else wert thou long since number'd with the dead! 
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire! 
The generations of thy peers are fled, 
And we ourselves shall go; 
But thou possessest an immortal lot, 
And we imagine thee exempt from age 
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page, 
Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not. 

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers 
Fresh, undiverted to the world without, 
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; 
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, 
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. 
O life unlike to ours! 
Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, 
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, 
And each half lives a hundred different lives; 
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. 

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, 
Light half-believers of our casual creeds, 
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, 
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, 
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; 
For whom each year we see 
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; 
Who hesitate and falter life away, 
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— 
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too? 

Yes, we await it!—but it still delays, 
And then we suffer! and amongst us one, 
Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly 
His seat upon the intellectual throne; 
And all his store of sad experience he 
Lays bare of wretched days; 
Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, 
And how the dying spark of hope was fed, 
And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, 
And all his hourly varied anodynes. 

This for our wisest! and we others pine, 
And wish the long unhappy dream would end, 
And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear; 
With close-lipp'd patience for our only friend, 
Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair— 
But none has hope like thine! 
Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, 
Roaming the country-side, a truant boy, 
Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, 
And every doubt long blown by time away. 

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, 
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; 
Before this strange disease of modern life, 
With its sick hurry, its divided aims, 
Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife— 
Fly hence, our contact fear! 
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! 
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern 
From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, 
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude! 

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, 
Still clutching the inviolable shade, 
With a free, onward impulse brushing through, 
By night, the silver'd branches of the glade— 
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, 
On some mild pastoral slope 
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales 
Freshen thy flowers as in former years 
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, 
From the dark tingles, to the nightingales! 

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! 
For strong the infection of our mental strife, 
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; 
And we should win thee from thy own fair life, 
Like us distracted, and like us unblest. 
Soon, soon thy cheer would die, 
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, 
And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; 
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, 
Fade and grow old at last, and die like ours. 

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! 
—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, 
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow 
Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily, 
The fringes of a southward-facing brow 
Among the Ægæan Isles; 
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, 
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, 
Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine— 
And knew the intruders on his ancient home, 

The young light-hearted masters of the waves— 
And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail; 
And day and night held on indignantly 
O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, 
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, 
To where the Atlantic raves 
Outside the western straits; and unbent sails 
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, 
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; 
And on the beach undid his corded bales. 
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Matthew Arnold: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Dover Beach"

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One night, the speaker of "Dover Beach" sits with a woman inside a house, looking out over the English Channel near the town of Dover. They see the lights on the coast of France just twenty miles away, and the sea is quiet and calm.
When the light over in France suddenly extinguishes, the speaker focuses on the English side, which remains tranquil. He trades visual imagery for aural imagery, describing the "grating roar" of the pebbles being pulled out by the waves. He finishes the first stanza by calling the music of the world an "eternal note of sadness."
The next stanza flashes back to ancient Greece, where Sophocles heard this same sound on the Aegean Sea, and was inspired by it to write his plays about human misery.
Stanza three introduces the poem's main metaphor, with: "The Sea of Faith/Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore." The phrase suggests that faith is fading from society like the tide is from the shore. The speaker laments this decline of faith through melancholy diction.
In the final stanza, the speaker directly addresses his beloved who sits next to him, asking that they always be true to one another and to the world that is laid out before them. He warns, however, that the world's beauty is only an illusion, since it is in fact a battlefield full of people fighting in absolute darkness.

Analysis

Arguably Matthew Arnold's most famous poem, "Dover Beach" manages to comment on his most recurring themes despite its relatively short length. Its message - like that of many of his other poems - is that the world's mystery has declined in the face of modernity. However, that decline is here painted as particularly uncertain, dark, and volatile.
What also makes the poem particularly powerful is that his romantic streak has almost no tinge of the religious. Instead, he speaks of the "Sea of Faith" without linking it to any deity or heaven. This "faith" has a definite humanist tinge - it seems to have once guided decisions and smoothed over the world's problems, tying everyone together in a meaningful way. It is no accident that the sight inspiring such reflection is that of untouched nature, almost entirely absent from any human involvement. In fact, the speaker's true reflection begins once the only sign of life - the light over in France - extinguishes. What Arnold is expressing is an innate quality, a natural drive towards beauty.
He explores this contradiction through what is possibly the poem's most famous stanza, that which compares his experience to that of Sophocles. The comparison could be trite, if the point were merely that someone long before had appreciated the same type of beauty that he does. However, it is poignant because it reveals a darker potential in the beautiful. What natural beauty reminds us of is human misery. Because we can recognize the beauty in nature, but can never quite transcend our limited natures to reach it, we might be drawn to lament as well as celebrate it. The two responses are not mutually exclusive. This contradictory feeling is explored in many of Arnold's poems - "The Scholar-Gipsy" and "A Dream" are two examples - and he shows in other poems an instinct towards the tragic, the human inability to transcend our weakness (an example would be "Consolation," which presents time as a tragic force). Thus, the allusion to Socrates, a Greek playwright celebrated for his tragedies, is particularly apt.
Such a dual experience - between celebration of and lament for humanity - is particularly possible for Arnold, since mankind has traded faith for science following the publication of On the Origin of Species and the rise of Darwinism. Ironically, the tumult of nature - out on the ocean - is nothing compared to the tumult of this new way of life. It is this latter tumult that frightens the speaker, that has him beg his lover to stay true to him. He worries that the chaos of the modern world will be too great, and that she will be shocked to discover that even in the presence of great beauty like that outside their window, mankind is gearing up for destruction. Behind even the appearance of faith is the new order, and he hopes that they might use this moment to keep them together despite such uncertainty.
The poem epitomizes a certain type of poetic experience, in which the poet focuses on a single moment in order to discover profound depths. Here, the moment is the visceral serenity the speaker feels in studying the landscape, and the contradictory fear that that serenity then leads him to feel. To accomplish that end, the poem uses a lot of imagery and sensory information. It begins with mostly visual depictions, describing the calm sea, the fair moon, and the lights in France across the Channel. "The cliffs of England stand/Glimmering and vast" not only describes the scene, but establishes how small the two humans detailed in the poem are in the face of nature.
Perhaps most interestingly, the first stanza switches from visual to auditory descriptions, including "the grating roar" and "tremulous cadence slow." The evocation of several senses fills out the experience more, and creates the sense of an overwhelming and all-encompassing moment.
The poem also employs a lot of enjambment (the poetic technique of leaving a sentence unfinished on one line, to continue and finish it on the next). The effect is to give the poem a faster pace: the information hits us in rapid succession, forming a clear picture in our minds little by little. It also suggests that Arnold does not wish to create a pretty picture meant for reflection. Instead, the beautiful sight is significant because of the fear and anxiety it inspires in the speaker. Because the poem so wonderfully straddles the line between poetic reflection and desperate uncertainty, it has remained a well-loved piece throughout the centuries.
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Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

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The sea is calm tonight. 
The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light 
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, 
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! 
Only, from the long line of spray 
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, 
Listen! you hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, 
At their return, up the high strand, 
Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles long ago 
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought 
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery; we 
Find also in the sound a thought, 
Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

The Sea of Faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
Retreating, to the breath 
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world. 

Ah, love, let us be true 
To one another! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
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