his poem gave Arnold a considerable amount of time to reflect on his relationship with the elder Arnold. Up until his father’s death he was sheltered from the world. When his father died he lost this haven of protection. But he also gained a new freedom. He gained the distance necessary to evaluate his relationship with his father. The world of experience was now open to him without the influence of his father’s guidance:
Lacking the shelter of thee. (Arnold 287)
Vaclav Havel once wrote that a person who lies under a boulder has more time to hope than someone who is not trapped that way. This newly won freedom, brought on by the death of his father, is what is celebrated in the above lines. The freedom to experience both “Sunshine and rain” can only come to one who has not had this freedom before. Arnold could celebrate this unsheltered aloneness because he knew what it meant to be shaded by a “mighty oak”: “Mary Arnold’s oldest boy was to grow up in the shadow of his father: that powerful personality was to mark him for life. All young men struggle to break free from paternal influence but, in the case of Matthew Arnold, his father’s overwhelming presence offered a peculiar challenge” (Murray 3).
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