“Thyrsis” is a poem by 19-century English poet Matthew Arnold, published in 1866. It was written to commemorate another English poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, who had been Arnold’s close friend at Rugby School and Oxford University. Clough died in Florence, Italy, in 1861. As the framework for “Thyrsis,” Arnold employs the classical Greek and Latin pastoral tradition; the poem is thus known as a pastoral elegy. In the poem, the speaker returns to the rural area near Oxford for the first time in many years. There he recalls his friendship with Clough, who is referred to as Thyrsis. (In ancient Greek mythology, Thyrsis was a shepherd.) The poem expresses themes of nostalgia and loss, but the poet also finds hope that the youthful ideals that inspired both him and Clough have not entirely vanished. He can find them in the midst of his hectic city life if he listens to an inner voice that reminds him of his deeper purpose. “Thyrsis” is usually regarded as one of Arnold’s most successful poems, and its theme of how to live an authentic life in the midst of a changing society is one of Arnold’s frequent concerns.

“Thyrsis” contains slang and references stereotypes of Romani peoples appropriate to the period and setting but potentially offensive to a contemporary audience.

Other works by this author include Dover Beach, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, and Culture and Anarchy.

Poet Biography

Matthew Arnold was born in Laleham, Middlesex, on December 24, 1822. He was the eldest son of the renowned Thomas Arnold, who from 1828 was headmaster of Rugby School. Matthew attended Rugby School from 1837 to 1840, and then he attended Balliol College, Oxford University, from which he graduated in 1844. He always retained fond memories of his time at Oxford. In 1847, Arnold became private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, who was a member of the cabinet in the British government. Four years later, Arnold was appointed inspector of schools, and in that same year he married Frances Lucy Wightman, with whom he would have six children. Arnold’s job involved him in much traveling at home and also abroad, as he reported to the government on the state of education in other European countries. He remained inspector of schools for 35 years.

In addition to his full-time job, Arnold was a poet and critic. His first collection of poetry was The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849), which was followed in 1852 by Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. In 1853, Poems: A New Edition, was published; it included a selection from the previous volumes as well as new poems, notably “The Scholar-Gipsy.”

Arnold was elected professor of poetry at Oxford in 1857. This was a part-time position, and he held it until 1867. His Merope, a classical tragedy, appeared in 1858, and Thyrsis in 1866, followed by New Poems (1867). By this time, Arnold had turned his attention away from poetry and he devoted the remainder of his career to social and literary criticism. His Essays in Criticism appeared in 1865; a second series of Essays in Criticism was published in 1888, shortly after his death. His most significant critical work, Culture and Anarchy, was published in 1869. Literature and Dogma appeared in 1873. In 1883 and again in 1886, Arnold went on a lecture tour of the United States and Canada.

Arnold died of heart failure on April 15, 1888, in Liverpool, at the age of 65.

Poem Text

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?

See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men

To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!

Here came I often, often, in old days—

Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,

Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns

The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?

The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,

The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?—

This winter-eve is warm,

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,

The tender purple spray on copse and briers!

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,

She needs not June for beauty's heightening,

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—

Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.

Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;

Now seldom come I, since I came with him.

That single elm-tree bright

Against the west—I miss it! is it goner?

We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,

Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;

While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,

But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;

And with the country-folk acquaintance made

By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.

Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.

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;

But Thyrsis of his own will went away.

It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest.

He loved each simple joy the country yields,

He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,

For that a shadow lour'd on the fields,

Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.

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.

So, some tempestuous morn in early June,

When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,

Before the roses and the longest day—

When garden-walks and all the grassy floor

With blossoms red and white of fallen May

And chestnut-flowers are strewn—

So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,

From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,

Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?

Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,

Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,

Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,

Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,

And stocks in fragrant blow;

Roses that down the alleys shine afar,

And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,

And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,

And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!

What matters it? next year he will return,

And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days,

With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,

And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,

And scent of hay new-mown.

But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see;

See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,

And blow a strain the world at last shall heed—

For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee!

Alack, for Corydon no rival now!—

But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,

Some good survivor with his flute would go,

Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate;

And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,

And relax Pluto's brow,

And make leap up with joy the beauteous head

Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair

Are flowers first open'd on Sicilian air,

And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.

O easy access to the hearer's grace

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!

For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,

She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,

She knew each lily white which Enna yields

Each rose with blushing face;

She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.

But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!

Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd;

And we should tease her with our plaint in vain!

Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be,

Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour

In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!

Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?

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,

And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;

I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?—

But many a tingle on the loved hillside,

With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees,

Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried

High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises,

Hath since our day put by

The coronals of that forgotten time;

Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,

And only in the hidden brookside gleam

Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl, who by the boatman's door,

Above the locks, above the boating throng,

Unmoor'd 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?

Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell

Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,

Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?—

They all are gone, and thou art gone as well!

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night

In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

I see her veil draw soft across the day,

I feel her slowly chilling breath invade

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;

I feel her finger light

Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; —

The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,

The heart less bounding at emotion new,

And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

And long the way appears, which seem'd so short

To the less practised eye of sanguine youth;

And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,

The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,

Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!

Unbreachable the fort

Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;

And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,

And near and real the charm of thy repose,

And night as welcome as a friend would fall.

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss

Of quiet!—Look, adown the dusk hill-side,

A troop of Oxford hunters going home,

As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!

From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.

Quick! let me fly, and cross

Into yon farther field!—'Tis done; and see,

Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify

The orange and pale violet evening-sky,

Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!

I take the omen! 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 scatter'd farms the lights come out.

I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,

Yet, happy omen, hail!

Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale

(For there thine earth forgetting eyelids keep

The morningless and unawakening sleep

Under the flowery oleanders pale),

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—

Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,

These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,

That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;

To a boon southern country he is fled,

And now in happier air,

Wandering with the great Mother's train divine

(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,

I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)

Within a folding of the Apennine,

Thou hearest the immortal chants of old!—

Putting his sickle to the perilous grain

In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,

For thee the Lityerses-song again

Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;

Sings his Sicilian fold,

His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes—

And how a call celestial round him rang,

And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang,

And all the marvel of the golden skies.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here

Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair.

Despair I will not, while I yet descry

'Neath the mild canopy of English air

That lonely tree against the western sky.

Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,

Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee!

Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay,

Woods with anemonies in flower till May,

Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,

Shy to illumine; and I seek it too.

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—

But the smooth-slipping weeks

Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;

Out of the heed of mortals he is gone,

He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;

Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;

Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!

Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,

If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,

If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.

And this rude Cumner ground,

Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields,

Here cams't thou in thy jocund youthful time,

Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!

And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.

What though the music of thy rustic flute

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 wage mute!

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.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!

'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,

Thyrsis! in reach of sheep-bells is my home.

—Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar,

Let in thy voice a whisper often come,

To chase fatigue and fear:

Why faintest thou! I wander'd 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 hill-side.

Arnold, Matthew. “Thyrsis.” 1866. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem commemorates Arnold’s close friend, Arthur Hugh Clough, a fellow poet, who died in Florence in 1861. It is written in the form of a classical pastoral elegy, in which Clough is presented as the shepherd Thyrsis and the speaker (Arnold) as Corydon, also a shepherd.

The speaker returns to the villages of North Hinksey and South Hinksey, near Oxford, after a long absence. He and Thyrsis used to visit the area often. It is early on a winter’s evening, and he notes some of the changes that have taken place since he was last there. In particular, he wonders if a certain elm tree he and Thyrsis used to enjoy seeing is still there. He and Thyrsis used to connect the elm tree to the story of the Scholar Gipsy (Stanza 3), which they both loved. (The Scholar Gipsy was an Oxford student in the 17th century, who abandoned his studies and joined a band of Romani travelers in search of the truth of life.) In Stanza 4, the speaker reviews what happened to him and his friend: while he was reluctant to leave the area they both loved so much, he had no choice, whereas Thyrsis made a free choice to leave, having got caught up in the controversial intellectual issues of the day. In Stanzas 6-8, the speaker likens the farewell call of the cuckoo in June to Thyrsis’s departure. The difference, however, is that the cuckoo will return next spring, but Thyrsis is dead and will not return.

After some reference to classical pastoral legends (Stanzas 9-10), the speaker reiterates that he knows the area very well and wants to find the elm tree, which sits at the top of a hill. He recalls the days when he and Thyrsis would take their boat out on the river Thames, but the scene he looks on now is very different from former days (Stanza 13). As night draws on, he comments about how his youth is gone, and he is no longer able to embrace life with the same enthusiasm as he once did (Stanza 14). In Stanza 16, he sees a group of hunters passing by and crosses over to another field, where he is excited to see the tree he has been looking for. He is relieved he has found it and wants Thyrsis to know it is still there (Stanza 18), even though Thyrsis is buried a long way away in Florence. The speaker states that as long as he sees that tree, he will not despair (Stanza 20) because he knows the Gipsy Scholar and what he represents lives on. The speaker also states that he still searches for the same truth the Gipsy Scholar sought, inspired by his heart (Stanza 21). He recalls in Stanzas 22 and 23 how Thyrsis shared those ideals; he was on the same quest, and in his youth, it inspired him too. His happy life in the countryside could not continue, though he did not entirely lose the bright visions of his youth. In the final stanza, the speaker laments that his visits to the area have become too infrequent. He lives now in the noisy city, which wearies the heart, but he asks that he might hear, in the voice of his departed friend, encouragement to still seek their youthful ideals since the tree still exists, and the Gypsy Scholar continues to roam.