The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

sometimes uses the pronoun we to indicate he is speaking for all humanity of later

generations. About the setting Arnold wrote to his brother Tom on May 15, 1857: "You alone

of my brothers are associated with that life at Oxford, the freest and most delightful

part, perhaps, of my life, when with you and Clough and Walrond I shook off all the

bonds and formalities of the place, and enjoyed the spring of life and that unforgotten

Oxfordshire and Berkshire country. Do you remember a poem of mine called 'The

Scholar Gipsy'? It was meant to fix the remembrance of those delightful wanderings

of ours in the Cumner Hills." The passage from Joseph Glanvill's Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661) that inspired the

poem was included by Arnold as a note:

3. In Greek mythology the god of woods and pastures.

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36 2 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

There was very lately a lad in the University of Oxford, who was by his poverty

forced to leave his studies there; and at last to join himself to a company of

vagabond gypsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty

of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem as that they

discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while exercised in

the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars, who had formerly been

of his acquaintance. They quickly spied out their old friend among the gypsies;

and he gave them an account of the necessity which drove him to that kind of

life, and told them that the people he went with were not such imposters as they

were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning among them, and

could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others:

that himself had learned much of their art, and when he had compassed the

whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world

an account of what he had learned.

The Scholar Gypsy

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!1

No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,

Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,

5 Nor the cropped 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-blanched green,

io 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,2 And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,

is 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 folded0 flocks is borne, penned upWith distant cries of reapers in the corn3�

20 All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screened is this nook o'er the high, half-reaped field,

And here till sundown, shepherd! will I be.

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,

And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see

25 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;

30 And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

Sheepfolds woven from sticks. 3. Grain or wheat. Pot or jug for carrying his drink.

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THE SCHOLAR GYPSY / 1363

And near me on the grass lies Glanvill's book

Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!

The story of the Oxford scholar poor,

Of pregnant parts4 and quick inventive brain,

35 Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,

One summer morn forsook

His friends, and went to learn the gypsy lore,

And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,

And came, as most men deemed, to little good,

40 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, long ago

Met him, and of his way of life inquired;

Whereat he answered, that the gypsy crew,

45 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 learned, will to the world impart;

50 But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill." This said, he left them, and returned no more.�

But rumors hung about the countryside,

That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,

Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,

55 In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,

The same the gypsies wore.

Shepherds had met him on the Hurst5 in spring;

At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,

On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frocked boors6

60 Had found him seated at their entering, But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.

And 1 myself seem half to know thy looks,

And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;

And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks7

65 I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;

Or in my boat I lie

Moored to the cool bank in the summer heats,

'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,