Matthew Arnold's The Forsaken Merman

Arnold contrasts the vitality of the life of the pagan mermen and mermaids with the sterility of the world of humans through the imagery he creates. The world beneath the sea is filled with color, designating vitality. Margaret and the merman king sat on a “red gold throne in the heart of the sea,” and it is, significantly, a “green sea.” Margaret combed her child's “bright hair,” which she later describes as “golden hair.” The merman's palace has “A ceiling of amber, “A pavement of pearl.”

In contrast, the world on land lacks color. Margaret says she must go to “the little gray church on the shore,” a description the merman later repeats (Arnold, 16). The church seems to have no brightly colored stained glass windows but only “small leaded panes.” The narrator speaks of guiding the children to “the white-walled town” and anticipates regular visits to the shore to gaze “At the white, sleeping town.” By repeating the adjectives “white” and “gray,” the poet enforces the sense of lifelessness in the town. The visitors from the sea observe no activity there except prayer in the church and Margaret at her spinning wheel. Although in her song Margaret speaks of “the humming street,” she may simply be deceiving herself, for the reader sees no movement. In the sea is vitality with a variety of creatures: “Now the wild white horses play,/ Champ and chafe and toss in the spray,” “the sea beasts, ranged all round,/ Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground,” “the sea snakes coil and twine,/ Dry their mail and bask in the brine” and “great whales come sailing by,/ Sail and sail, with unshut eye,/ Round the world for ever and aye”; the sea seems to be filled with perpetual motion (Arnold, 17).

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