This is a selection of poems from the English poet Matthew Arnold (1822-88).  This is my first time reading a collection of Arnold’s work.  The book breaks up the poems into four sections: early poems, narrative poems, sonnets, and lyric and elegiac poems.  I believe when you read a person’s literary works, you get an idea of who the writer is.  This is especially true of poetry.  I get the sense of longing for what might have been that was not: a traveler looking for answers.  His Scholar-Gipsy epitomizes this feeling I get of who Arnold was.  Reading the collection, I get the sense that he was a determined and strongly dedicated man.  He believed in lofty ideals and hoped fervently for justice to prevail.  However, his Idealism was tempered with the reality of how things usually turn out.  Many of his writings deal with travelers and customs.  The characters experience a crisis of choice that must be made and it does not end in a fairy tale ending, but rather a realistic view. Of his early poems, I particularly enjoyed Stagirius .  The narrative poem Sohrab and Rustum tells a father and son story of how fate can be…