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INTRODUCTION
The Friends: From 1845 to 1848 Arnold and Clough were together at Oxford. They were rather intimate friends and there are internal pieces of evidence in the poem establishing that fact. They roved through in the Oxford countryside together. Together they sought the Truth, and both started to write their poems at Oxford. However their relationship became less intimate later and by 1853 "it was only an affectionate formality". Arnold appreciated the sincerity but he didn't approve of his conception of the function of poetry. He once wrote to him "I doubt your being an artist", and advised him to undergo the discipline of reading the Bhagawad Gita. The gulf between the two remained till Clough's death at Florence in 1861. But there was no loss of personal affection between the two at any time.
The Origin of the Poem: On the death of Clough, Mrs. Clough wrote to Arnold to write an obituary note in the columns of The Daily News. Arnold replied "That I cannot do. But I shall some day in some way or other relieve myself of what I think about him". Later he declined to write a memoir for Mrs. Clough's edition of the prose works of her husband. One should think his mind was set on writing a pastoral poem in honour of his friend. There is internal evidence in Thyrsis to think that Arnold had been reading and re-reading Theocritus and Moschus, two celebrated pastoral poets. He spent about two years in the preparation and writing of the poem and it appeared in the April issue of Macmillan's Magazine. The mode of the poem and its Oxford setting make it appear a sequel to The Scholar Gipsy written in 1853. Garrod writes about it. "Five years lie between the poem and its occasion, two years were spent in the composition of it; thirteen years separate it, from the poem to which it is the Sequel". Milton wrote his Lycidas immediately on the death of his friend Edward King. Shelley wrote his Adonais, too, immediately after the death of Keats. Perhaps, Tennyson, who wrote his In Memoriam 17 years after Arthur Hallam's death set a precedent to Arnold. In his lecture on Homer, Last Words, Arnold has said all he had to say about Clough. The lecture coincided with the death. Then he didn't want to say anything more until he decided on the form through which he should honour his friend.
LINE BY LINE SUMMARY
Stanza 1. Line. 1-10: The poet is in the Oxford countryside and he notices the changes that have taken place all around. The two villages of Hinkseys, (North and South) have become different. The haunted house which was in the village street is no more there. The signboard, Sybilla, announcing an inn too is gone: also gone are the twisted chimneys from the houses. He wonders whether the hills around too have changed. He is not at all a stranger to the place, for he used to come here often in olden days in the company Corydon. Corydon was alive at that time.
Stanza 2. Line. 11-20: He thinks that he stands somewhere on the path that passes Childsworth Farm going up the hill where the elm tree stood. Behind the hill a glorious sun-sets could be seen. The elm tree used to be very prominent on the hill top. From there one could get a good view of Ilsley Downs, the valley, the three dams and the vigorous Thames. It is winter time, the evening is warm and the air is humid. Though the trees are leafless the purple coloured branches appear tender. The sweet city (Oxford) of dreaming spires too can be seen in the distance. That city doesn't need summer to look beautiful.
Stanza 3. Line. 21-30: Oxford which looked always lovely is lovely tonight also. He feels, as he is wandering through the place, that he has lost the former intimacy with the place. Earlier he could move around the place even blindfolded, at any time, day or night. Since he came with him (Thyrsis) last, he hasn't come to the place. In the west there was the single magnificent elm tree. Now it is not there, and they (Corydon & Thyrsis) value the tree very highly. They used to say that as long as the tree remained, the Scholar Gipsy whom they appreciated could not die. As long as the tree was alive, he too must remain in the Oxford countryside.
Stanza 4. Line. 31-40: His visits to the place have become very rare now-a-days. But there was a time when he knew even minute details of the place. He used to make acquaintance with the villagers during the time of threshing and hay-making. They (Thyrsis & Corydon) started writing their poetry too in this place. But alas, for very long, he has not written any poem at all. He had to give up the pleasure of a poet sadly, and enter the crowded worldly life.
Stanza 5. Line. 41-50: But Thyrsis felt unhappy at Oxford and he left the place on his own. Surely he loved the simple joys that Oxford could offer and his mates. But some dark shadow of (intellectual) troubles fell on tie downs as well as on the students of the university. Some unhappy incidents of life there, made him a troubled person, and he left the place. Ever since his departure, his poems sounded unquiet, foreshadowing the turbulent changes happening outside the university. But before devastating changes occurred in the society, he died.
Stanza 6. Line. 51-60: On a tempest-torn June morning, after the advent of the season when flower blooms aplenty, and before the time of roses and the longest day (21st June), when the garden-paths and lawns were filled of red and white, he heard the farewell cry of the cuckoo bird; coming through the wind-tossed and rain-washed trees: "the flowering season is gone and I too must go with it.
Stanza 7. Line. 61-70: Oh quick despairer, why should you go? The glory of midsummer will be here soon. The perfumed carnations will bloom in profusion; there will be golden snapdragons and Sweet-William that smells of the country cottages; stocks will spread its scent and roses will shine along the path; jasmines will be blossoming on trellises bordering the windows; and there will be parties of men and women enjoying the full moon and the bright evening star, under peaceful garden trees.
Stanza 8. Line. 71-80: But the light hearted visitor (the cuckoo) doesn't heed to the appeal, and he is gone. But it does not matter much. Next spring he will be back again, when the hedges are white with flowers, ferns and bluebells sway near forest paths, and when the smell of newly-mowed hay spreads around. But Thyrsis will not come again, to write a different kind of poetry, one of a smoother strain that will compel the world to listen. Thyrsis is not conquered by Corydon but by Time. (In Virgil's Eclogue Corydon defeated Thyrsis in a singing contest between the two).
Stanza 8. Line. 81-90: It is a pity that Corydon does not have Thyrsis now to compete against. When the shepherd of Sicily lost a friend, some of the friends would go to the nether world blowing sad notes on their pipes, appealing to Pluto to restore their friend. (It happened when Bion died.) The singer would cross the forbidden river, soften the severity of Pluto's mind, and charm Proserpine, who was born in Sicily. He would play the flute even like Orpheus, and regain the life of his friend.
Stanza 10. Line. 91-100: When the Sicilians sang to win the favour of Proserpine they had an advantage. She had been a native of Sicily and she knew every sacred streams, every white field of Enna, every red coloured rose; and she loved the Sicilian flute and the Sicilian songs. But our poor Thames, and the cowslips-flowers of Cumner hills are not familiar to her. Our songs of lament could only annoy her.
Stanza 11. Line. 101-110: Though he knows that the words of his lament would be a meaningless effort, he would give expression to his grief in their old familiar hill top where the elm tree stood. He has a better right than any other to find out the hill. He knows where the daffodils are to be found and where the Fyfield tree (One was used as Maypole to dance around on May-day) is; he also knows where fritillaries grow on grasslands beside the river (Thames) above Oxford in Enshaim and below in Sanford. Further he knows all the sedge bordered streams that flow into river Thames.
Stanza 12. Line. 111-120: He is more familiar with the slopes of the hill than any other. Many deep dells in this dear countryside, which during earlier days were full flowerbearing thorns and trees, cowslips and long spiked orchises have vanished. They have given way to farmlands. Only here and there near the streams a few primroses, are to be seen surviving as orphans.
Stanza 13. Line. 121-130: He thinks of the old time when a girl was to be seen at the boatman's door, above the locks helping party going for boating. They unfastened their boats and they towed their boats alongside meadows, while swallows darted and water gnats flitted on the surface of water. The grass mowers suspended their work to watch the waves made by the boats made the riverside grass sway. They are all gone. And so also are you (Thyrsis).
Stanza 14. Line. 131-140: Yes you are now dead. The passage of time is bringing my death too nearer. He can see her shadow coming closer, as the cheeks grow thinner and the hair grow greyer. He can feel the touch of death, as walking in the early morning becomes difficult and the mind becomes less responsive to emotions. And hope once frustrated doesn't spring back quickly.
Stanza 15. Line. 141-150: Long and difficult seems the path of progress; earlier in his youth the path appeared easy and short. The uphill journey to Truth appeared smooth and effortless during the happy dawn of his life. Now it - Truth-remains on unattainable peaks hidden in clouds. The fort in which evil stays is being made stronger by the worldly minded people. He finds no meaning in this earthly life, for life grows strange. You have achieved perpetual rest in death, which has its charms. The poet welcomes old age as it brings him nearer to the stage (death) in which you are now in.
Stanza 16 Line. 151-160: Let me avoid being noticed. The quietness of this upland is suddenly disturbed. A group of Oxford hunters are returning home, as jovial and noisy as in olden days. They are returning from their hunting with their Berkshire hounds. Let me run away from them, and cross into the distant field. Yes it is done. Now, against the glory of the orange and violet sunset, can be seen, on the ridge of the hill, the Tree.
Stanza 17. Line. 161-170: I consider the tree as a good omen. Evening is putting on the veil; the white fog is spreading among the bush. The colour of the evening western sky vanishes and stars are growing brighter. Lights begin to appear in the widely spread out farmhouses. Though I cannot reach the Signal Tree tonight the sight is an omen. Thyrsis, hear the news, from your distant resting place in the valley of Arno, where you sleep eternally, forgetful of the earthly life, under the pale flowered Oleanders.
Stanza 18. Line. 171-180: Thyrsis, you hear it: Our Tree exists there. But it is useless for him. These English fields, this darkening countryside and the lovely upward-pointing tree are of no good to him. He has gone from this place of prickly shrubs wrapped in mist, he has fled to the pleasant country in the South, where the climate is more agreeable. You are wandering with the scared retinue of Mother Nature within some Apennine mountainous valley. I am sure, among the divine retinue, none is as pure a soul as you are, Thyrsis.
Stanza 19. Line. 181-190: You hear many immortal songs of old. You hear the Lytyerses, song which Daphnis sings in a melodious voice when he reaped the hazardous corn in the hot fields of the Phrygian king. He sings of his flock in Sicily, his unhappy love affair with a jealous nymph, her blinding him, and how Mercury approached him and raised him to heaven from a fountain. He sings also about the golden skies.
Stanza 20. Line. 191-200: You have gone leaving me lonely in these fields. However, I will not be disheartened as long as I can see under the soft English sky, that singular elm tree in the western horizon. That sight makes it clear that our Scholar Gipsy is wandering in these fields, outliving you. He is known to be wandering these places where soft wooly sheep eat their hay, among woods where anemones bloom till as late as May. Then why can't I too be a wanderer here?
Stanza 21. Line. 201-210: The Scholar Gipsy seeks the knowledge which is difficult to acquire because of its elusiveness. I too seek it; it cannot be acquired with gold, property and other possessions, or with the support of flattering friends. It is not bought or sold in market places of the world. Often the passage of time takes the seeker closer to this death but no near to his goal. However he (The Scholar Gipsy) pursues his goal, alone away from other humans, without followers, but with an inspired eagerness, and with un-diminishing hope.
Stanza 22. Line. 211-220: You also, Thyrsis, was on a quest like that. You wandered with me, in the quest, for a short while. Your fellow-men didn't appreciate you. When they thought you were feeble, this quest gave you strength. When they gave you trouble, your quest brought you peace. And you, in your happy youth, came to this rough Cumner hills, the fir true lined Hurst. The height of your powers, and the bloom of your life acquired a glory here. Even now this dear place gives strength to people like me.
Stanza 23. Line. 221-230: It is immaterial that your poetical voice could not keep for long its joyous country tone; it acquired a turbulent tone describing the inner conflicts and the groaning of human beings. They failed to appeal and you stopped your attempts at poetry. Yet you always had the right vision and you could not remain with the worldly lot. You left the ordinary men and went on your wandering search till it was night.
Stanza 24. Line. 231-240: Living a life amidst the city's noise within earshot of the bells of the sheep, a life different from that I led with you before, I visit this place only very scarcely. Through the harsh and oppressive noise of the town, I get an occasional whispering message from you, and it dispels my world-weariness and doubts: "Why do you feel weak? I wandered (in search of truth) till I died. Go on wandering. The light we searched for is still shining. If you want any proof for it, see, the tree still grows atop the hill and our Gipsy Scholar still wanders over the dear countryside."
CRITICAL APPRECIATION AND ANALYSIS
Arnold himself called the poem Thyrsis a "monody, to commemorate the author's friend, Arthur Hugh Clough who died at Florence, 1861". However the author was conscious of a strange fact, that very little of Clough could be seen in a poem, lamenting his death. The poem is more about the Oxford countryside through which both Clough and Arnold wandered during their university days. The poet once wrote to this closest friend in later life, J.C. Sharp in the month of the publication of Thyrsis as follows: "It had long been in my mind to connect Clough with the Cumnor country and when I began I was carried irresistibly into this form. You say truly enough that there is much in Clough (the whole prophet side. in fact) which one cannot deal with in this way; and one has the feeling if one reads the poem as a memorial poem, that not enough is said about Clough in it. I feel this so much that I do not send the poem to Mrs. Clough. Still Clough had this idyllic side too: to deal with this suited my desire to deal again with that Cumnor country. Anyway only so could I treat the matter this time". In the poem he does not lament Clough either as a personal friend or as a fellow poet. In neither capacity Clough was dear to Arnold. But he was dear to Arnold as "the embodiment of Oxford" in the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century. Arnold's passion for Oxford countryside is parallel to that of Wordsworth for the Lake District and of Hardy for Wessex. He loved that sweet city of dreaming spires. She does not need June to be lovely. At Oxford was his height of strength, his golden prime. In the poem he feels unhappy over his own unproductiveness.
Ah me! this many a year
My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday;
Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart;
(Line. 36-39)
This loss of creative powers of his own, is what Arnold really laments in the poem. True, the death of Clough revived this feeling of loss of creative power. He had lamented the loss, 13 years back in Scholar Gipsy. Then it was the reading of Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing that revived that special mood. Garrod has this to say: "I doubt if so late, at a time when his power in poetry was intermittent Matthew Arnold could have achieved the supreme success of Thyrsis, were it not that subject took him back to The Scholar Gipsy - period, and to a period yet earlier, the period of his undergraduate youth. His power is lifted high by the immense in flooding of distant memories". Trilling has described Thyrsis as a "memorial of a vanished youth and of a nearly vanished mood no less than a vanished friend". Arnold's elegies are not at all laments for the individual not even in Rugby Chapel and A Southern Night where the subjects are his own father and brother respectively. They are laments for a vanished glory. Even the Oxford of Thyrsis is not quite the place of his days. He starts the poem telling of the change:
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village-street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks;
Are ye too changed ye hills?
(Line. 1-6)
Even the much fancied elm three is gone.
That single elm-tree bright
Against the west - I miss it! is it gone?
(Line. 26-27)
So he addresses his dead friend, Thyrsis and says, "They all are gone, and thou art gone as well".
Arnold as well laments a vanished age as his dead friend.
Too Little of Clough in Thyrsis: Arnold himself knew that Thyrsis was going to. be a different kind of elegy. According to Trilling, the poem is, "in some ways a strange commemoration. Not that it gives but one side of Clough, the troubled side, but it celebrates the weakness of that side. Its theme is that Thyrsis of his own will went away' unable to wait out the high winds of doctrine.
While Arnold upholds the strength of character of that "Oxford scholar poor in the The Scholar Gipsy, he has only pity for the mental conflict of Clough.
Some life of men unblest
He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing, he is dead! (Line. 46-50)
His poems were different from that time onwards. It had developed a stormy note and no one appreciated them. Clough's poems
Kept not for long its happy, country tone,
Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,
Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat
It fail'd, and thou wast mute; (Line. 222-226)
Truly, Arnold sheds tears over the weakness of the departed dear friend. However, there is one virtue that the poet sees in him; it will more than compensate all the short-comings. Clough was of a pure and subtle soul who always "had visions of our light". Memory associated with him was a matter of inspiration to the poet. The last lines of the poem glorify Clough in no uncertain terms. He hears Clough speaking:
Let in thy voice a whisper often come:
To chase fatigue and fear,
Why faintest thou? I wandered till I died.
Roam on! the light we sought is shining still.
Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill
Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside.
Here at last we get a manly image of Clough; not only manly but also angeltic.
The Oxford Countryside: Picturing Clough either as a poet or prophet was not the aim of Arnold in Thyrsis. His aim was to associate Clough with the Oxford which was dear to both of them. It is apt to consider the poem as an attempt at glorifying Oxford. Possibly Arnold would not have written such a poem if Clough were not connected with Oxford. While Clough remains very shadowy in the poem, Oxford blooms into a vividly living scene. As the poet moves from corner to corner in the Oxford countryside, it is not the memory of his friend that comes to his mind. Instead the poet recaptures his own happy times spent in the place. His love for the area, his longing to linger around in the Hinkseys, by the path beside Childsworth Farm, on the western hill where the elm tree stands. the meadows of Wytham flats and all over the beloved haunt. According to Garrod the photographically true description of the place gives to Thyrsis an element of beauty wanting in our other elegies. Thirteen years earlier, in Scholar Gipsy, Matthew Arnold had tried his hand upon the Oxford scene. If Thyrsis and The Scholar Gipsy had no other merits, yet there are in landscape, and the fine sentiment with which they particularise, with which they fix natural details--these two talents alone-might vindicate for Matthew Arnold a place with the greatest posts; Gray's Elegy, Collins' Ode to Evening, Keats' Ode to Autumn, it is with compositions of that supreme order that these two poems must be ranged.
Verity says that;
Thyrsis ... presents an idealised picture of university life, and perhaps for sincerity and true feeling begotten of love for the scenes described the advantage rests which the hand that wrote the famous panegyric and apostrophe in the preface to the essays in criticism.
Pastoral with a Difference: By setting the poem in the countryside made famous by the university, Arnold succeeds in removing the characteristic artificiality of a pastoral poem from Thyrsis. In a pastoral elegy, a poet supposes himself and his friends to be shepherds, in a rustic field. The shepherds, the field, the pipe and all other paraphernalia are creations of the poet's fancy. They are often symbolic, standing for someone else or something else. In Thyrsis the pasture is the university countryside, the shepherds Arnold and Clough, the flock their common pursuits, and the shepherd pipes their poetic gifts. While the whole setting in Lycidas or Adonais is feigned, it is very real in Thyrsis, all from actual observation" as Arnold himself wrote to this mother. A mere convention in other pastorals rise up with all the warmth of reality, before the readers. The Hinkseys are there; Childsworth farm and Isley Downs are there; the Vale, the three lone weirs, and that sweet city with her dreaming spires in the distance is there". When Arnold says,
....once I knew each field, each flower, each stick: (Line. 32)
or
I know the wood which hides the daffodil.
I know the Fyfield tree,
I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford yields, (Line. 105-109)
We know he says it from his memory. Arnold, in the company of Clough and others often had roved through that dear countryside.
In descriptions like:
Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door
Above the locks, above the boating throng,
Unmoord our skiff when, through the Wytham flats,
Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet, among
And darting swallows and light water-gnats,
We track'd the shy Thames shore? (Line. 121-126)
The descriptions are no mere conventions for its own sake. Anyone familiar with Oxford will find that all those are realistic descriptions based on acute observation. To an Oxon, or to a lover of Oxford the appeal is irresistible.
Style: Arnold himself remarked about Thyrsis: 'It is probably too quiet a poem for the general taste, but I think it will stand wear'. Its descriptions of Oxford, all idyllic, account for much of the charm of the poem. But the elegiac is not unimportant either. Lucas mentions in Ten Victorian Poets, Not even Adonais had a nobler dirge than the death of Thyrsis drew from the son of that Arnold under whom he had begun his (Clough's) troubled experience of life." The diction of the poem is so artless as to be almost heedless. The spell of perfect felicitous expressions like, abound in the poem.
Arnold's classical self-restraint, makes him suppress his feelings and the poem attains the quickness of thought and tone. The opening, harping on the changes that has happened to the countryside, sets the tone of the poem. The time of the beginning of the poem, a warm winter-day evening is as quiet as the same hour when in Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
Then the poet makes an imaginary trip around the dear countryside. The 'eve lets down her veil' and the town's harsh heart-wearing roar' is in the far distance. The quietness is broken only on two occasions. First when,
After those again there is peace, serene calm and quietness. In describing the countryside and its scenic beauty and in his semi-philosophic musings, the prevailing mood is that of serenity.
Stanzas 6, 7 and 8 were especially dear to Arnold's mother. The parting cry of the cuckoo was really heard by Arnold in the garden at Woodford. The poet's favourite extended simile, the Homeric simile, is profitably carried through all the three stanzas. Strictly it is not a simile, but an an extended metaphor. The echo of Moschus' Lament for Bion is clear in the 8th stanza. Moschus says:
"when mallows or the pale green parsley, or the curling anise perish in the garden, they are reborn in another year. But alas when we men... are once dead, we sleep an unending unawakening sleep.."
The charm of these stanzas are independent of Oxford. Also they show the sincere grief Arnold felt, at the death of Clough. The last line of stanza eight, 'For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee', alludes to the poetic contest between Thyrsis and Corydon, mentioned in Vergil's Eclogue.
Often Thyrsis is compared with two other elegies in English, Milton's Lycidas and Shelley's Adonais. The fact that the poem is mentioned along with these great elegies itself is a tribute to Arnold's achievement. Perhaps Thyrsis is greater than the other two in two ways: in the reality of the scene and in the depth of the feeling. Sure it is not so highly strung a piece like Lycidas neither does it possess the intensity of passion found in Adonais. Perhaps it is difficult to compare them and adjudge which is the greatest. All three will remain as sublime examples of pastoral elegy in English Literature.
Pictorial qualities: The exquisite and detailed nature-description in Thyrsis is one of the great attractions of the poem. Arnold as an young Oxon along with Clough and others had roved the Oxford countryside and the memory of those rovings remained dear in his memory. The descriptions we get in Thyrsis (and also in The Scholar Gipsy) are drawn from actual observations. The cowslips growing thick on the slopes, the copses and briers aflame under the setting sun, woods that hide the daffodils, white and purple fritillaries, dingles studded with trees in bloom, orchises, primroses on brookside appearing as orphans of the flowery prime, all are recreated in the poem from poet's own memory.
The idyllic plains from where Prosperine was abducted comes alive before the readers imagination. The boatman's girl who unmoored the boat will haunt the memory of any reader with sensibility. And the picture of Wytham flats, made lively with
Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among,
And darting swallows, and light water-gnats, (Line. 124-125)
Will remain in memory as a rural masterpiece of a great painter. Then there is the cinematographically live picture of the mowers, who as the tiny swell
Of our boat passing heav'd the river-grass,
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass? (Line. 128-129)
The Oxford riders returning home, as in old days, jovial and talking is another scene in motion. And then there is the sighting of the tree against a glorious sun-set:
Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify
The orange and pale violet evening-sky
Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree! (Line. 158-60)
True this is a static picture. But a motion picture follows:
..Eve lets down her veil,
The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,
The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,
And in the scattered farms the lights come out. (Line. 161-164)
Surely the static graphical and the cinematographic combine here.
Nature in Thyrsis: Arnold's love for nature and his accurate observation power are evident in the poem. As in other nature poems of his, Arnold dwells chiefly on the calm and tranquil aspect of nature. He appears to draw some sort of comfort from the contact with Nature. The calm is effectively contrasted with noise of human life. In the fourth stanza we find him feeling sad at the loss of his creativity because he departed from nature into the "world and wave of men"
Whenever special haunts of Oxford come before his mind Arnold becomes nostalgic. The 13th stanza beginning with, where is the girl, displays not only his passion for Oxford life, but also for the charms Nature can afford. When the Oxford riders appear on the scene.
Arnold's dislike for the way of the world and his longing to seek the soothing company of Nature is amply clear here. In the last stanza he feels sorry he cannot be with Nature more often.
Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!
'mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,
Thyrsis, in reach of sheep-bells in my home! (Line. 231-233)
Then he yearns for a whisper from his gone companion to reach through the great 'town's harsh, heart wearying roar". In all these we find Arnold clearly showing his preference to a life close to Nature over the harsh and wearying city life.
The Reminiscence in the Poem: In Thyrsis Arnold laments the death of a vanished age and culture as much as the death of Clough. The poet's letter to his friend J.C. Sharp clearly shows this aspect of the poem.
He wrote,
It had long been in my mind to connect Clough with the Cumner country...
The poem starts with the expression of regret for the changes that had happened to Oxford countryside.
Then he gives a sensuous description of the various flowers that abound in the place. The thirteenth too is full of reminiscence associated with boating, boatman's girl and the scythers watching the speeding Oxford boats swaying the, grass on the shores of Thames.
The picture of Oxford scholars returning from a hunt should have been gleaned from the memory of the hunts he himself took part years back. Perhaps the reminiscences, most relevant to the thought-content of the poem are that of the signal tree, which was on a ridge on a hill west of Oxford and the legend associated with The Scholar Gipsy. Arnold has succeeded in making both of them effective symbols.
High Seriousness and Criticism of Life: Poetry according to Arnold is criticism of life. But to make great poetry there must be high seriousness associated with the criticism. While Arnold apparently laments a personal loss in Thyrsis there is also relevant criticism of life in it, throughout. The materialism of the Victorians is very well disparaged when the poet with subdued sarcasm says that the gracious light of Truth cannot be hid by wealth.
This does not come with houses or with gold,
With place, with honour, and a flattering crew:
"Tis not in the world's market bought and sold.
With high seriousness befitting great poetry Arnold strikes at the root of earthly vanity and says:
And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows. (Line. 148)
A religious meaning too can be red into the poem. Arnold the classicist alludes to the eternal life in the nether world, in which Greeks believed. Arnold's poetic fancy accepts the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul. Thyrsis is in a 'southern country, to which he has fled' and he is beside the,
...broad lucent Arno vale
(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep
The morningless and unawakening sleep Under the flowery oleanders pale.)
(Line. 167-70)
He is with Proserpine, in Italy where her rape took place and where Clough was buried. (He was buried in Florence) However his immortality is real in another way too. He is as immortal as the Gipsy Scholar, who never quits his quest for truth, waiting for heaven sent moments of get a glimpse of the ultimate Truth. Yes in Thyrsis there is criticism of life. Also there is high seriousness. And in that criticism, there is the watermark of great poetry.
LINE BY LINE EXPLANATIONS
1. This winter-eve ..... heightening. Stanza 2. Line. 16-20
Here Arnold, the poet, gives the settings of the poem. In the beginning of the poem he has mentioned the changes he has noticed in the Oxford countryside. Then he establishes the identity of the locality where he is at the moment. It is near Childsworth farm.
It is winter time, and the time is the evening and the weather is warm and humid. Trees remain leafless, but the tender and purple things of copse and bushes give the impression that it is spring time. The city of Oxford and its dreaming spires could be seen from the place. The city looks beautiful and the poet comments that Oxford is beautiful in all seasons. Even without the blossoms of June and its colour, Oxford is beautiful.
Arnold's love for his Alma Mater is deep. He has given expression to his love for Oxford, especially to its towers and spires, through his two Oxford poems. Thyrsis and The Scholar Gipsy in verse and through the preface he wrote to Essays in criticism, first series:
The spires probably according to Arnold, are dreaming of its lost glory, the glory of a vanished age. In the Preface too he imagines the Oxford towers as dreaming of its medieval glory.
In selecting evening as the time for the 'action' of the poem Arnold appears to be following Thomas Gray. His Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard starts when the curfew tolls the knell of parting day: Probably evening with the approaching darkness is the appropriate time to deal with things elegiac.
2. Lovely all times ..... lived on. Stanza 3. Line. 21-30
Arnold continues with the tribute to Oxford in the previous stanza.
Oxford which is lovely always, remains lovely this night too. But the poet feels some loss of intimacy with the place. During former days he knew the whole area so well that he could travel anywhere blindfolded, any time during day or night. But now his visits have become very rare. There used to be a remarkably noticeable elm tree at the top of a western hill. It is not to be seen now. Is it gone, the poet asks. Clough and Arnold valued the tree highly. They believed the mythical idea that as long as the tree grew there the wandering Scholar also was alive. The legend of the Scholar Gypsy who went away from Oxford and joined a Gipsy group first appeared in print form, in Glanvil's book Vanity of Dagmatizing. Arnold in his Oxford Poems take the Scholar as the symbol of man's untiring quest for Truth. The lone tree on the western hill appears as the symbol of the Truth itself. The fanciful story of about the Oxford Scholar poor' has undergone an alchemical change in Arnold's poems.
3. Here, too ..... went away. Stanza 4. Line. 35-40
In these lines, Arnold reminisces his days at Oxford in Clough's company. Considering themselves as shepherds in the pastoral convention, the author says both Clough and he started writing poems at Oxford. Then he adds that during the many previous years he had not been writing any poetry at all. He was rather to part with the joy of poetic composition with a sad heart and take up the chores common people. But Thyrsis (Clough) went away on his own will.
'Shepherd's holiday', alludes to the poetically unproductive period of Arnold. Between 1857 and the year of publication of Thyrsis Arnold had not published any poetry. He was 47 when Thyrsis was published. 'Many were his interruptions'. "Of his own will went away" refers to the voluntary resignation of Clough from the fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford in the year 1848.
4. It irk'd him ..... he is dead! Stanza 5. Line. 41-50.
In this stanza the poet tells of the causes of Clough's departure from Oxford mentioned in the previous stanza. He tells of the cares and doubts that dampened the spirit of Clough.
Clough was an affable person who loved the simple charms the countryside could offer. He loved his friends deeply. But there was something that disturbed his tranquillity. The absence of joy in human life, and the problems humans have to face troubled him. Further he could not tolerate some of the dons of the university and the students and their evil ways. In the end he left Oxford. Then his poems developed a melancholy tone for they reflected the religious controversies that raged in and outside Oxford. Before those storms of controversies blew out he died.
Life of men unblest: For some time before Clough left, he was very much perturbed by the acute sufferings of the people of Ireland during the period known as 'potato famine'. His resignation might have been caused also by the religious controversies of the time revolving around the Oxford Movement.
Of Storms that rage outside our happy ground: It may be an allusion to the religious controversies of the time that were triggered by the Oxford Movement. Though it started in Oxford it had its impact on religion as a whole. Or perhaps the allusion could be to the religious controversies that arose out of the attempt to reconcile religion and science. Alternatively, it could be a reference to the Chartist Movement', of the working classes demeaning democratic measures such as universal suffrage. The movement disappeared after 1848, the year of Clough's resignation.
5. So have I .... go I. Stanza 6. Line. 57-60
Here Arnold puts forward the similarity between a Cuckoo and Clough. The cuckoo's parting cry is a parallel to "his piping", meaning Clough's poems that had a troubled note. The wet field' and 'vext garden trees' may stand for the controversies and troubles amidst which Clough wrote his poems. Clough was disappointed, just like Arnold, at the disappearance of an age without doubts and troubles. Like the cuckoo who went away when the bloom-season vanished Clough too went away from the world, when the glory of the past peaceful age disappeared.
This stanza along with the two that follow were very much to the liking of Arnold's mother. In a letter dated 7th April 1866, Arnold wrote to her The cuckoo on the wet June morning I heard in the garden at Woodford and all those three stanzas you like are reminiscences of Woodford". It is worth noticing that the cuckoo changes its note during June (Clough's poems acquired a sad tone) and this may be considered as its parting cry. But the cuckoo does not depart immediately after the change in tone. It migrates only a full month later. The last line sounds almost like the Fitzgerald translation of Omar Khayam's poem, Rubaiyat.
6. Alack for Corydon ..... from the dead. Stanza 9. Line. 81-90
In this stanza, the poet speaks of the effect of the death of Thyrsis on Corydon. The death of Clough has been a shock to Arnold. However, Arnold cannot bring his friend back from death's kingdom. The Sicilians could do that. When a friend died, one of the friends of the dead man would go to the nether world and restore him to life by the courtesy of the gods. He would cross the forbidden river, and please Pluto by his singing. Prosperine on hearing it would leap up with joy. She was a native of Sicily and so she decorated herself with Sicilian flowers. (Naturally she will show special sympathy for one of her country-men). Orpheus got back his wife Eurydice, by that method.
Bion, here stands for a dead Sicilian. He was a pastoral poet of Sicily who lived in the Ist century B.C. On his death, one of his pupils and a poet, Moschus, wrote a pastoral elegy Lament for Bion, That work has influenced Lycidas, Adonais and Thyrsis.
Proserpine: Daughter of Zeus and Demeter. Legend says that she was carried off by Pluto while gathering flowers in the vale of Enna in Sicily and made her queen of the underworld.
Orpheus: A legendary poet and singer of pre-Homeric, times. When his beloved wife Eurydice died, he went to Hades, pleased Pluto with his singing and according to one version of the story got his wife back.
Corydon no rival now: The allusion is to the 7th Eclogue of Vigil where the two shepherds Thyrsis and Corydon, as rivals, take part in a singing contest.
7. O easy access ..... plaint in vains. Stanza 10. Line. 91-100
Arnold here says that the advantage the Sicilian singers and poets had, is not available for the English poets. Prosperpine, herself being a Sicilian, would be sympathetic to her countrymen. She was familiar with the flowers and waters of Sicily, white lilies, and pink roses of Enna. She loved the Dorian flute and the Dorian tunes, but has not heard of river Thames and the cowslips-flowers of Cumner country. If the poet tries to please Prosperpine, the song would only irritate her.
Enna: The Greek legends say that Proserpine was abducted by Pluto while she had been gathering flowers in the field of Enna, in Sicily.
8. I know ..... flowery prime. Stanza 12. Line. 111-120
Arnold says that he will continue the search for truth which Clough and he jointly indulged in, in the Oxford countryside. The poet here rather boasts of his intimate knowledge of the locality. Then he expresses his sorrow at the change that has happened to the place. Once all the deep valleys were full of natural vegetation. Thorns, white-flowered trees, cowslips and orchises, abounded. But they have stopped blossoming since the time Thyrsis and Corydon went away from the place. In the place of natural vegetation, modern farms were developed. Now flowers, only primroses, are to be found near streams, and they appear as orphans of a flowery period. Critics have pointed out that in Thyrsis, Arnold laments not only the death of Clough but also a vanished age. That age is symbolised by the flowery prime of the Oxford countryside.
9. Thou hearest ..... golden skies. Stanza 19, Line. 181-190
The poet fancies that Clough now lives in the nether world, where life is better than in this world. He could hear the immortal harvest-songs of ancient times. Daphnis would be there, singing sweetly of his earthly life, how he came under the power Lityerses, the king of Phrygia, about his sheep, his unhappy love, his blindness, how he went to heaven from a fountain, and about the wonderful things in heaven.
Arnold appears to have combined two versions of the Daphnis story here. To quote the poet himself Daphnis, the ideal shepherd of Greek pastoral poetry followed his wife Piplea, who was carried off by robbers to Phyrgia. There he found her under the power of the king Lityerses. The king used to make strangers contest with him in reaping of corn and put them to death if he defeated them. Hercules came to help Daphnis and defeated the king in the contest and slew him. The Lityersis-song based on the story was one of the early plaintive songs Greek corn reapers used to sing. According to another legend he was struck with blindness by Nymph, whom he loved once but showed infidelity later. Mercury raised him to heaven and made a fountain in the place from where he ascended.
10. A fugitive ..... heart inspired. Stanza 21. Line. 201-210
Here Arnold brings in the Gipsy Scholar as an ideal, in the search for the ultimate truth. The Scholar is wandering the countryside searching for the gracious light of truth.
The poet too is in search of it. But it is not easy to arrive at it. It cannot be acquired through wealth, or position or honour or with the help of flattering followers. It is not a property that can be bought or sold. The seeker of truth should patiently continue the search, tireless, away from the pursuits of average men, often alone. The real seeker will go forward always under the inspiration of his own heart.
Perhaps the most serious thought content of the poem is found in this stanza. The Scholar Gipsy becomes the symbol of man's search for truth and wisdom. Arnold hints that the material minded Victorians are not likely to attain the ultimate truth. Here is "criticism of life", which is the watermark of great poetry. And that criticism is associated with a high seriousness. So we find Arnold is writing poetry true to his own dictum that poetry is criticism of life.