Matthew Arnold’s Elm

Abstract

Offers evidence demonstrating that Arnold’s allusion to the “signal elm” in “Thyrsis,” the symbol of the speaker’s quest for eternal youth, is based on a real experience Arnold had in November 1863. Cites meteorological records, ordnance survey maps, and records of tree growth in an area outside Oxford that help pinpoint the tree Arnold mistook for an elm, but which nonetheless inspired the central metaphor in his elegy for Clough.