Page "Arthur Hugh Clough" Paragraph 3

Oxford, in 1837, was in the full swirl of the High Church movement led by John Henry Newman.

Clough was for a time influenced by this movement, but eventually rejected it.

He surprised everyone by graduating from Oxford with only Second Class Honours, but won a fellowship with a tutorship at Oriel College.

He became unwilling to teach the doctrines of the Church of England, as his tutorship required of him, and in 1848 he resigned as tutor and traveled to Paris, where he witnessed the revolution of 1848.

Returning to England in a state of euphoria, he wrote his long poem The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, a farewell to the academic life, following it up with poems from his time as student and tutor, in the shared publication Ambarvalia.

In 1849 he witnessed another revolution, the siege of the Roman Republic, which inspired another long poem, Amours de Voyage ( reprinted by Persephone Books in 2009 ).

Easter Day, written in Naples, was a passionate denial of the Resurrection and the fore-runner of the unfinished poem Dipsychus.