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Matthew Arnold Essay, Research Paper

One of the most noted English poets of the 19th Century (Victorian era) is Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). Arnold s style of writing consists of writing exactly how he feels, rather than writing about what the readers want to hear. Analyzing Arnold s works shows a sorrowful, serious, and desolate mood throughout his writings. Literary elements such as imagery, setting, irony, allusion, and repetition are used to create the lonesome and pessimistic moods of three of Arnold s poems: Requiescat (1853), Isolation: To Marguerite (1857), and Dover Beach (1867).

Arnold uses imagery to create the mood of one of his early poems, titled Requiescat. The poem is about the death of a woman who the poet admired and held strong feelings towards. The opening lines of Requiescat describe the woman with Strew on her roses, roses, and never a spray of yew! The image of roses is often associated with purity and affection. The emphasis of roses twice reveals to the reader that the narrator had a special relationship with the woman, possibly a lover. This creates a compassionate and loving mood for the woman. However, by having the roses scattered over her body evokes an image of confusion and anger over her death. The yew, an evergreen tree with dark leaves, creates an image of cruelty or darkness while the roses create an image of beauty and grace. The last few lines of the first stanza describe how the woman reposes into the casket and how the narrator would like to die as well, saying, would that I did too! This image evokes a sad and desolate mood. The narrator is alone and cannot bear living a life without her.

Arnold continues to create the mood of the poem by describing the dead woman in the second stanza. The narrator describes the woman as someone who bathed in the world with smiles of glee. The word bathed emphasizes the purity of the woman and how she lit up the world. However, her heart was tired, tired. This reveals to the reader that she worked to help others, but may have been taken advantage of or maybe taken for granted. The use of the word tired twice emphasizes the fragile heart of the woman. This creates a sad and sympathetic mood, for her death seems untimely.

Arnold emphasizes the pessimistic mood in the third stanza when he writes that the dead woman s life was turning, turning, in mazes. The adjective turning is not the literal meaning of spinning around and around, but rather to turn sour or rancid. This word implies that she was losing her grace and excellence when exposed to the harsh world, depicted as mazes. The word turning also creates an image of confusion, much like the word strew in the first stanza does. This creates a bitter mood where Arnold is criticizing society.

The concluding stanza of Requiescat describes the dead woman s spirit and evokes a bitter mood. Arnold believes that the woman s spirit was too great and too kind but it was forced to stay in her body, and ultimately, in this world. Images of her spirit and how it flutter d, may be compared to that of a butterfly. By describing her spirit like that of a butterfly, Arnold is saying that her body was her cocoon and once she passed on, she evolved into a butterfly who wanted to help others. However, she fail d for breath for her unselfishness and ultimately met her end in the vastly hall of death. From these images, one can conclude the final mood of the poem is bleak and lonesome. Society has taken away the one true thing in the narrator s life and now he is alone in the world that dealt his loved one her untimely death.

In Isolation: To Marguerite, Arnold tells of a couple separated from one another. However, the narrator is confident in their love, saying, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away. The repetition of I bade serves to emphasize the narrators determination to reunite with his love, Marguerite. The overall mood of the first stanza is optimistic and hopeful. This is emphasized when Arnold writes that the love grew like mine, each day, more tried, more true. The rhythm of this line is like a steady heartbeat using two words, followed by a pause with a comma. This emphasizes that the narrator as the utmost confidence in reuniting with his love and that his love for her is true.

The first stanza s mood is optimistic of love, but the opening line of the second stanza ironically depicts that love is bad. Arnold describes that The fault was grave! I might have known, What far too soon, alas! The drastic change in mood is emphasized with the use of exclamation marks depicting a pitiful and angry narrator. The mood has changed from optimistic (first stanza) to pessimistic (second stanza). The narrator has given up hope in his love for Marguerite. This is emphasized with the word grave which serves two meanings. The first meaning is that loving Marguerite was a serious mistake on the narrator s part. The other meaning is a grave found in a cemetery, which symbolically buries the narrator s hopes for attaining true love. The narrator realizes that faith may oft be unreturn d and that the emotions involving love is a back and forth process that he will no longer take part in. The narrator emphasizes this with repetition Farewell! Farewell! The narrator s use of the word farewell denotes that he may be hiding what he truly feels. Bidding farewell is a polite and nice way of saying goodbye, wishing the recipient of this a safe trip to their destination. If the narrator is truly bitter of love, then a more fitting phrase would be good riddance or be gone. This gives the reader a reason to think that the narrator is saying Farewell to love not wholeheartedly. This evokes a sad and tangled mood.

The third stanza continues where the second stanza ended with Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart Back to solitude again! The stutter-like repetition of thou depicts a confused narrator. He

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