Matthew Arnold’s “The Scholar-Gypsy”

Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was a Victorian poet and ‘sage’. In his poetry and critical writing he tackled some of the big issues of the day, the implications for society of the rise of industrialism and the challenges of modern thought to religion, among them. In his poem ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’ (1853) he tells the story of an Oxford student who abandons his stress-filled life for a different sort of existence and perhaps discovers the secret of living well. The text can be found at www.poetryfoundation.org