In “The Scholar-Gipsy,” the theme of melancholy is related to the speaker’s sadness over the advent of industrialization and the corresponding decline of pastoral lifeways. In Matthew Arnold’s poem, this theme is very closely connected to nostalgia.

Melancholy is a term that refers to an emotional state or a mental condition, with associated physical characteristics; it is also referred to as melancholia. This state was identified in medieval medicine as caused by an imbalance of the body’s humors, specifically an excess of black bile. Physical symptoms associated with the malady include fatigue and lassitude. Melancholy was later used for extreme and continued sadness and has been identified as an antecedent of the modern medical diagnosis of clinical depression.

In Arnold’s poem, the idea of melancholy advances through the course of the poem. The speaker’s rapt contemplation of the natural world and the refuge of a university town set the stage for their subsequent rejection of the ills that most of modern society embodies. Their nostalgic lament for the loss of the idyllic past evinces a sorrow tinged with anger. Discord and fatigue are strong elements of the speaker’s melancholic attitude, as they decry the effects of toil that “wears out the life of mortal men.” The sad weight of modern life is inflicted by “repeated shocks” that

Exhaust the energy of strongest souls
And numb the elastic powers.