Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems Part 31

EAST LONDON

=2. Bethnal Green.= An eastern suburb of London.

=4. Spitalfields.= A part of northeast London, comprising the parishes of Bethnal Green and Christchurch.

Image the scene. What is the purpose of the first four lines? Discuss l. 6. What is the import of the preacher's response? What are the poet's conclusions drawn in ll. 9-14?

WEST LONDON

=1. Belgrave Square.= An important square in the western part of London.

Tell the situation and the story of the poem. Why did the woman solicit aid from the laboring men? Why not from the wealthy? Explain ll. 9-11. What is the poet's final conclusion?

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MEMORIAL VERSES

APRIL, 1850

Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, in the Lake, District, April 23, 1850.

These verses, dedicated to his memory, are among Arnold's best-known lines. For adequacy of meaning and charm of expression, they are almost unsurpa.s.sed; they also contain some of the poet's soundest poetical criticism. The poem was first published in _Fraser's Magazine_ for June, 1850, and bore the date of April 27.

=1. Goethe in Weimar sleeps.= The tomb of Goethe, the celebrated German author (see note, l. 29, _Epilogue to Lessing's Laoc.o.o.n_), is in Weimar, the capital of the Grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar. Weimar is noted as the literary centre of Germany, and for this reason is styled the German Athens.

=2. Byron.= George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), a celebrated English poet of the French Revolutionary period, died at Missolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to help the Greeks in their struggle to throw off the Turkish yoke. He was preeminently a poet of pa.s.sion, and, as such, exerted a marked influence on the literature of his day. His petulant, bitter rebellion against all law has become proverbial; hence the term "Byronic." The =t.i.tans= (l. 14) were a race of giants who warred against the G.o.ds. The aptness of the comparison made here is at once evident. In Arnold's sonnet, _A Picture at Newstead_, also occur these lines:--

"'Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry Stormily sweet, his t.i.tan-agony."

=17. iron age.= In cla.s.sic mythology, "The last of the four great ages of the world described by Hesiod. Ovid, etc. It was supposed to be characterized by abounding oppression, vice, and misery."-- _International Dictionary_. The preceding ages, in order, were the age of gold, the age of silver, and the age of bra.s.s. [197]

=34-39=. Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, was stung to death by a serpent, and pa.s.sed to the realm of the dead--Hades. Thither Orpheus descended, and, by the charm of his lyre and song, persuaded Pluto to restore her to life. This he consented to do on condition that she walk behind her husband, who was not to look at her until they had arrived in the upper world. Orpheus, however, looked back, thus violating the conditions, and Eurydice was caught back into the infernal regions.

"The ferry guard Now would not row him o'er the lake again."

--LANDOR.

=72. Rotha=. A small stream of the English Lake Region, on which Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's burial-place, is situated.

THE SCHOLAR-GIPSY

"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 gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem 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 gipsies, 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 impostors 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 compa.s.sed the whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned."--GLANVIL'S _Vanity of Dogmatizing_, 1661. [198]

=2. wattled cotes=. Sheepfolds. Probably suggested by Milton's _Comus_, l. 344:--

"The folded flocks, penned in their _wattled cotes_."

=9. Cross and recross=. Infinitives depending upon seen, l. 8.

=13. cruse=. Commonly a.s.sociated in thought with the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, 1 _Kings_, xvii: 8-16.

=19. corn=. See note, l. 156, _Sohrab and Rustum_.

=30. Oxford towers=. "Oxford, the county town of Oxfordshire and the seat of one of the most ancient and celebrated universities in Europe, is situated amid picturesque environs at the confluence of the Cherwell and the Thames (often called in its upper course the Isis).

It is surrounded by an amphitheatre of gentle hills, the tops of which command a fine view of the city with its domes and towers."--BAEDEKER'S _Great Britain_, in his _Handbooks for Travellers_. In writing of Oxford, Hawthorne says: "The world, surely, has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime, and more than one, to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily." See also note, l. 19, _Thyrsis_.

=31. Glanvil's book=. See introductory note to poem.

=42. erst=. Formerly. (Obsolete except in poetry.)

=44-50=. See introductory note to poem.

=57. Hurst=. c.u.mner (or c.u.mnor) Hurst, one of the c.u.mnor range of hills, some two or three miles south and west of Oxford, is crowned with a clump of cedars; hence the name "Hurst."

=58. Berkshire moors=. Berkshire is the county, or shire, on the south of Oxford County.

=69. green-m.u.f.fled=. Explain the epithet.

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=74. Bablockhithe=. A small town some four miles west and a little south of Oxford, on the Thames, which at that point is a mere stream crossed by a ferry. This and numerous other points of interest in the vicinity of Oxford are frequented by Oxford students; hence Arnold's familiarity with them and his reference to them in this poem and _Thyrsis_. See any atlas.

=79. Wychwood bowers=. That is, Wychwood Forest, ten or twelve miles north and west of Oxford. See note, l. 74.

=83. To dance around the Fyfield elm in May=. Fyfield, a parish in Berkshire, about six miles southwest of Oxford. The reference here is to the "May-day" celebrations formerly widely observed in Europe, but now nearly disappeared. The chief features of the celebration in Great Britain are the gathering of hawthorn blossoms and other flowers, the crowning of the May-queen and dancing around the May-pole--here the Fyfield elm. See note, l. 74. Read Tennyson's poem, _The Queen o' the May_.

=91. G.o.dstow Bridge=. Some two miles up the Thames from Oxford.

=95. lasher pa.s.s=. An English term corresponding to our _mill race_.

The _lasher_ is the dam, or weir.

=98. outlandish=. a.n.a.lyze the word and determine meaning.

=111. Bagley Wood=. South and west of Oxford, beyond South Hinksey.

See note, l. 125; also note, l. 74.

=114. tagg'd=. That is, marked; the leaves being colored by frost.