Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems Part 32

=115. Thessaly=. The northeastern district of ancient Greece, celebrated in mythology. Here a forest ground near Bagley Wood. See note, l. 111; also note, l. 74.

=125. Hinksey=. North and South Hinksey are unimportant villages a short distance out from Oxford in the c.u.mnor Hills. See note, l. 74.

[200]

=129. Christ Church hall=. The largest and most fas.h.i.+onable college in Oxford; founded by Cardinal Wolsey in 1525. The chapel of Christ Church is also the cathedral of the diocese of Oxford.

=130. grange=. Consult dictionary.

=133. Glanvil=. Joseph Glanvil, 1636-1680. A noted English divine and philosopher; author of a defence of belief in witchcraft.

=140. red-fruited yew tree=. The yew tree is very common in English burial-grounds. It grows slowly, lives long, has a dark, thick foliage, and yields a red berry. See Wordsworth's celebrated poem, _The Yew-Tree_.

=141-170=. "This note of la.s.situde is struck often--perhaps too often--in Arnold's poems."--DU PONT SYLE. See also _The Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann_. For the author's less despondent mood, see his _Rugby Chapel_, included in this volume.

=147. teen=. Grief, sorrow; from the old English _teona_, meaning injury.

=149. the just-pausing Genius=. Does the author here allude to death?

=151. Thou hast not lived= (so). That is, as described in preceding stanza.

=152. Thou hadst one aim=, etc. What was the Scholar-Gipsy's _one_ motive in life?

=157-160. But thou possessest an immortal lot=, etc. Explain.

=165. Which much to have tried=, etc. Which many attempts and many failures bring.

=180. do not we ... await it too=? That is, the spark from heaven. See l. 171.

=182-190=. Possibly Carlyle, although the author may have had in mind a type rather than an individual.

=208-209. Averse, as Dido did=, etc. Dido, the mythical queen of Carthage, being deserted by her lover aeneas, slew herself. She afterward met him on his journey through Hades, but turned from him in scorn.

[201]

"In vain he thus attempts her mind to move With tears and prayers and late repenting love; Disdainfully she looked, then turning round But fixed her eyes unmoved upon the ground, And what he says and swears regards no more Than the deaf rocks when the loud billows roar."

--DRYDEN'S _Translation_.

For entire episode, see _aeneid_, vi, 450-476.

=212. inviolable shade=. Holy, sacred, not susceptible to corruption.

Perhaps no other of Arnold's lines is so much quoted as this and the preceding line.

=214=. Why "silver'd" branches?

=220=. dingles. Wooded dells.

=231-250=. Note the force of this elaborate and exquisitely sustained image; how the mind is carried back from these turbid days of sick unrest to the clear dawn of a fresh and healthy civilization. In the course of an essay on Arnold, the late Mr. Richard Holt Hutton says of this poem and this closing picture: "That most beautiful and graceful poem on the _Scholar-Gipsy_ (the Oxford student who is said to have forsaken academic study in order to learn, if it might be, those potent secrets of nature, the traditions of which the gypsies are supposed sedulously to guard) ends in a digression of the most vivid beauty.... Nothing could ill.u.s.trate better than this [closing] pa.s.sage Arnold's genius and his art.... His whole drift having been that care and effort and gain and pressure of the world are sapping human strength, he ends with a picture of the old-world pride and daring, which exhibits human strength in its freshness and vigor.... I could quote poem after poem which Arnold closes by some such buoyant digression: a buoyant digression intended to shake off the tone of melancholy, and to remind us that the world of imaginative life is still wide open to us.... This problem is insoluble, he seems to say, but insoluble or not, let us recall the pristine force of the human spirit, and not forget that we have access to great resources still.... Arnold, exquisite as his poetry is, teaches us first to feel, and then to put by, the cloud of mortal destiny. But he does not teach us, as Wordsworth does, to bear it." [202]

=232. As some grave Tyrian trader, etc=. Tyre, the second oldest and most important city of Phoenicia, was, in ancient times, a strong compet.i.tor for the commercial supremacy of the Mediterranean.

=236. aegean Isles=. The aegean Sea, that part of the Mediterranean lying between Greece on the west, European Turkey on the north, and Asia Minor on the east, is dotted with numerous small islands, many of which are famous in Greek mythology.

=238. Chian wine=. Chios, or Scio, an island in the aegean Sea (see note above), was formerly celebrated for its wine and figs.

=239. tunnies=. A fish belonging to the mackerel family; found in the Mediterranean Sea.

=244. Midland waters=. The Mediterranean Sea.

=245. Syrtes=. The ancient name of Gulf of Sidra, off North Africa, the chief arm of the Mediterranean on the south, =soft Sicily=. Sicily is noted for its delightful climate; hence the term, "soft Sicily."

=247. western straits=. Strait of Gibraltar.

=250. Iberians=. Inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, formed by Portugal and Spain.

What atmosphere is given the poem by the first stanza? What quest is to be begun, l. 10? What caused the "Scholar" to join himself to the gipsies? What were his original intentions? Why, then, did he continue with them till his death? Why would he avoid others than members of the gipsy crew? Why his pensive air? To what truth does the author suddenly awake? How does the Scholar-Gipsy yet live to him? Explain fully lines 180-200. Note carefully the author's contrast between the life led by the Scholar-Gipsy and our modern life. Which is better?

Why? Make an application of the figure of the Tyrian trader. Is it apt? Why used by the poet? Discuss the verse form used. Is it adapted to the theme of the poem? [203]

THYRSIS

A monody to commemorate the author's friend, Arthur Hugh Clough, who died at Florence, 1861.

Throughout this poem there is reference to the preceding selection, _The Scholar-Gipsy_, of which it is the companion piece, and, in a sense, the sequel. It is one of the four great elegies in the English language.

Thyrsis is a name common to both ancient and modern literature. In the Idyls of Theocritus it is used as the name of a herdsman; in the Eclogues of Vergil, of a shepherd; while in later writings it has come to mean any rustic.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), whose poetry is closely akin in spirit to Arnold's, was a young man of genius and promise. He studied at both Rugby and Oxford, where he and Arnold were intimately a.s.sociated and became fast friends. In 1869 his health began to fail, and two years later he died in Florence, Italy, where he had gone in the hope of being benefited by the climate.

Arnold, in a letter to his mother dated April, 1866, says of his poem: "Tell dear old Edward [Arnold] that the diction of the Thyrsis was modelled on that of Theocritus, whom I have been much reading during the two years this poem has been forming itself, and that I meant the diction to be so artless as to be almost heedless. However, there is a mean which must not be pa.s.sed, and before I reprint this I will consider well all objections. The images are all from actual observation.... The cuckoo in the wet June morning, I heard in the garden at Woodford, and all those three stanzas, which you like, are reminiscences of Woodford. Edward has, I think, fixed on the two stanzas I myself like best: 'O easy access,' and 'And long the way appears.' I also like 'Where is the girl,' and the stanza before it; but that is because they bring certain places and moments before me.... It is probably too quiet a poem for the general taste, but I think it will stand wear." To his friend, John Campbell Shairp, Arnold wrote, a few days later: "Thyrsis is a very quiet poem, but, I think, solid and sincere. It will not be popular, however. It had long been in my head to connect Clough with that c.u.mner country, and, when I began, I was carried irresistibly into this form. You say, truly, that there was much in Clough (the whole prophetic side, in fact) which one cannot deal with in this way.... Still, Clough had the idyllic side, too; to deal with this suited my desire to deal again with that c.u.mner country. Anyway, only so could I treat the matter this time. _Valeat quantum_." [204]

=1.= Note how the tone of the poem is struck in the first line.

=2. In the two Hinkseys.= That is, North and South Hinksey. See note, l. 125, _The Scholar-Gipsy._

=4. Sibylla's name.= In ancient mythology the Sibyls were certain women reputed to possess special powers of prophecy, or divination, and who claimed to make special intercession with the G.o.ds in behalf of those who resorted to them. Do you see why their "name" would be used on signs as here mentioned?

=6. ye hills.= See note, l. 30, _The Scholar-Gipsy._

=14. Ilsley Downs.= The surface of East and West Ilsley parishes, in Berks.h.i.+re, some twelve or fourteen miles south of Oxford, is broken by ranges of plateau-like hills, known in England as _downs_.

=15. The Vale.= White Horse Vale; the upper valley of the River Ock, westward from Oxford. =weirs=. See note, l. 95, _The Scholar-Gipsy._ [205]

=19. And that sweet city with her dreaming spires.= Arnold's intense love for Oxford and the surrounding country appears in many of his essays and poems. In the introduction to his _Essays on Criticism_, Vol. I, occurs the following tribute: "Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!

'There are our young barbarians all at play!'

And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her garments to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantment of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection--to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side?... Home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs and unpopular names and impossible loyalties! what example could ever so inspire us to keep down the Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all p.r.o.ne, that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines on the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise ... to have left miles out of sight behind him: the bondage of 'was uns alle bandigt, Das Gemeine'?"

=20.= Compare with Lowell's lines on June, in _The Vision of Sir Launfal_.