#6 The Scholar Gypsy – Matthew Arnold

Question: Take one stanza from the Scholar Gypsy and carefully explicate its meaning saying how you think the language and form (stanza shape) contribute to the stanza’s power and effect.

The significance of this stanza was to highlight the rumors, which has begun circulating about the whereabouts of the scholar gypsy. It was as if wherever the scholar gypsy was located was such a sacred place and it would take some time to venture to. The location of the scholar gypsy was the countryside. It paints the scene in a sense that something big and miraculous is coming.

Written by Matthew Arnold: Stanza 6

“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,
In hat of antique shape, and a cloak of grey,
The same the gypsies wore.
Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frocked boors
Had found him seated their entering,”

In each stanza at the centre of the paragraph the structure changes for one line. The 6^th line is the shortest and makes the shape of the stanza change its mold. It forwards a message that we have to think about and put the pieces together for.
The line reads as “The same the gypsies wore.” – It is the only line in this stanza which pauses with a full stop, reading the unlikely matter which has been noted before. In this sense, the speaker is comparing or detailing the scholar persona to be alike one of a reaper (grim reaper context) “in hat antique shape, and a cloak of grey,”

I like the fact that you can see how far language has come from back then to now. Words have been grammatically corrected, sentences have been punctuated to allow for pauses, but In saying that the way this certain stanza is written with all it’s short and sharp sentences portrays the pace in which this story goes through. It’s fast and continually beating. The speaker effectively without making it too sudden changes the pronoun to second person pronoun. This is done intentionally to create a sense of intimacy with the scholar gypsy as well as for special effect.

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