“The Scholar-Gipsy”

“The Scholar-Gipsy” develops along a sort of dialectical pattern. Broadly speaking, it juxtaposes two diametrically opposed worlds, the idyllic world of the Scholar-Gipsy and the sick and inert world of the poet-speaker. The tension of the poem springs from this juxtaposition. The poem falls into recognisable sections and grows by discernible stages. The opening section of three stanzas presents a mellow rural scene of quiet and restful peace near Oxford, as viewed by the poet from a vantage point, from “this nook over the high, half-reaped field.” At the end of the description, he settles down to read “the oft-read tale” of the Gipsy-Scholar from Glanvil’s book. Andrew Farmer finds this opening description “confusing and indirect” and thinks that it “does not seem...to serve any special purpose although it is effective in itself”. But, in fact, it is intended to serve, and it does serve, a specific though limited function; namely, it serves as a symbolic back-drop for the rest of the poem. Arnold uses such landscapes in many of his other poems for a similar purpose. Next, the very details of the landscape–the “high field’s dark corner”, “the bleating of the folded flocks” borne “from uplands far away”, the “distant cries of reapers” etc., and the inter-play of light and shade in the landscape–all these together with the slow elegiac movement of the verse create a sense of restful calm and quiet relaxation, of disengagement and withdrawal from the world of brisk activity and from all that might distract one’s attention, and induce in the poet and the reader alike the mood appropriate to the elegiac meditation that is to follow very shortly in the poem. Even the apparent ambiguity regarding the time in the description, whether it is afternoon or evening the poet here refers to, contributes to this mood. Further the sense of imaginative withdrawal and disengagement from the immediate and actual, even as it helps the poet-speaker to distance himself from his own pressing and disturbing emotions, it also enables him and the reader to follow on “viewless wings of poesy” the wandering Scholar-Gipsy. The question regarding the identity of the shepherd addressed in the first line of the poem, whether it is clough or someone else, seems irrelevant. For, addressing a fellow shepherd is a part of the pastoral convention, which Arnold adopts here. This shepherd is asked to go back to his bleating flock for the present, and pursue his “quest” some other time, for two obvious reasons. Firstly, the poet wants to be left alone so that undisturbed he can “read the oft-read tale” of the Oxford Scholar and meditate on it. Secondly, he wants to introduce into the poem the theme of quest. The quest is for a spiritual order or pattern, for an integrated ideal, for something that would make life meaningful and purposeful