25 pages • 50 minutes read
Matthew ArnoldThyrsis: A Monody, to Commemorate the Author's Friend, Arthur Hugh Clough
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Time and Change
The theme of change is pervasive in the poem. This is to be expected since the speaker is returning to a place he used to know intimately but has not visited in many years. The very first line announces that everything man-made in this small area of the countryside has changed with the passing of the years: “Nothing keeps the same” (Line 10). The haunted house on the street is no more to be seen; a tavern no longer has a sign indicating the former owner’s name. The girl the narrator remembers who would unmoor their skiff when they took it out on the river is no longer to be seen (Lines 121-23). Only the “dreaming spires” (Line 19) of Oxford seem to be unchanged.
Much of the natural scenery, however, remains the same, though change in nature is expressed through the passage of the seasons. The seasons come and go with their usual regularity, and the poem contains descriptions of winter, spring, and midsummer that convey this salient fact. There is a significant difference, however, between change in nature and change in the human world: The passage of the seasons is cyclic, but human change is not. The narrator points this out in Stanzas 6 to 8: the cuckoo departs in late spring and will return when spring comes in the following year, but there can be no return for Thyrsis since he is dead and subject to the inevitable process of time: “For Time […] hath conquered thee!” (Line 80).
Time and change are also behind the contrast between youth and middle age. The youthful shepherds (as the poet presents himself and Clough) who reveled in the “simple joy” (Line 42) of the countryside have metamorphosed, at least in the case of the narrator, into a middle-aged man with thin cheeks and hair flecked with gray and none of the jaunty step or emotional spontaneity of youth. This contrast is heard again in the final stanza in the reference to the “fatigue and fear” (Line 236) the narrator experiences in his life in the city.
Death, Grief, and Loss
In keeping with the conventions of the pastoral elegy, the poem is haunted by death and the narrator’s grief for his fallen friend. The note of loss is first sounded at the end of the first stanza, when the narrator recalls how he and Thyrsis used to visit the villages often: “we still had Thyrsis then” (Line 10). The next direct mention of Thyrsis is at the end of Stanza 4. After the narrator states that he himself went reluctantly into the wider world, he adds that Thyrsis “of his own will went away” (Line 40), which suggests a critical attitude to the man being memorialized. This is confirmed in the following stanza, where the narrator implies that Thyrsis left the Oxford area too soon; he got swept up in political and religious controversies (“storms that rage outside our happy ground” [Line 49]) and abandoned their pure-hearted ideals. Traditionally, the one who is lamented in a pastoral elegy is praised without reservation, so this harshness is a notable exception, though the speaker later softens it on more than one occasion and gives Thyrsis his due.
Whatever his argument with Thyrsis’s actions, the speaker nevertheless presents himself as grief-stricken at the loss of his beloved friend, as he states in Stanza 11. Addressing Thyrsis directly, he asks permission to give his “grief its hour” (Line 102), as soon as he discovers the old elm tree that once meant so much to them. He expresses regret again after he discovers the tree. At first, he is exultant and calls out to Thyrsis about his discovery, but then he realizes the English fields and the lone tree “are not for [Thyrsis],” as he is in a far-off southern country, “in happier air” (Line 176) wandering with the “great Mother’s train divine” (Line 177). The great mother is Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, and the speaker uses this opportunity to pay tribute to his friend, stating that Demeter will not see “a purer or more subtle soul than thee” (Line 178). The narrator also imagines Thyrsis can hear the “immortal chants of old” (Line 181)— Sicilian songs and stories from ancient Greek mythology. This is the closest the narrator gets to invoking some kind of immortality for Thyrsis, which was often an element in the traditional pastoral elegy. The narrator offers Thyrsis no prospect of immortality in the Christian sense, however.
After the mention of those immortal songs of old, grief and the sense of loss follow in the words “There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here / Sole in these fields (Lines 191-92). Then, in the last three stanzas, the speaker renews his praise for Thyrsis, removing the accusatory tone of the earlier stanza. It is almost as if the speaker is rewriting the earlier reference to soften the notion that Thyrsis betrayed his (and their) ideals. Even if he did, it was not for long:
Yet hadst thou always visions of our light,
And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,
And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way,
Left human haunt, and on alone till night (Lines 227-230).
Hope, Affirmation, and the Eternal Search for Truth
In the early part of the poem, the narrator expresses a certain confusion and anxiety along with his grief at the loss of his friend. Back in his old haunts after a long absence, everything in the area seems different. Will he be able to find the old tree that symbolized so much to him and Thyrsis? If not, all his youthful ideals are surely gone forever. There is almost a desperation in his search; a lot seems to hang on it, as he is badly in need of the renewal of some kind of hope in his life. Even without the death of Thyrsis to vex him, he is troubled by encroaching middle age and the stress of life in the city. He seeks relief. Given his anxiety, it is not surprising that when he does locate the tree he is overwhelmed with excitement. He associates the tree with the stories about the Gipsy Scholar, whose eccentric search for truth outside of the academic environs of Oxford inspired him as well as Thyrsis. Since the tree still exists, the scholar must also, according to the narrator’s reasoning; legend and desire has accorded him, in the mind of the speaker, immortality.
The scholar thus stands for the eternal search for truth and knowledge, even if that knowledge is beyond the scope of what mainstream thought can comprehend or accept. The narrator has found a way of affirming that it is still possible to beat back the assaults of time and change and the mediocrity of middle age to rediscover and rededicate himself to the quest for truth, a calling that is the best reason to go on living. It may be a lonely quest, pursued alone and without the knowledge of others, but it lives deep within the heart of the individual. It allows the poem, which otherwise would be full of loss and regret, to conclude on a note of affirmation and belief: “The light we sought is shining still” (Line 238).
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By Matthew Arnold
