Arnold begins "The Scholar Gipsy" in pastoral mode, invoking a shepherd and describing the beauties of a rural scene, with Oxford in the distance.

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Arnold begins "The Scholar Gipsy" in pastoral mode, invoking a shepherd and describing the beauties of a rural scene, with Oxford in the distance. He then repeats the gist of Glanvill's story, but extends it with an account of rumours that the scholar gipsy was again seen from time to time around Oxford. Arnold imagines him as a shadowy figure who can even now be glimpsed in the Berkshire and Oxfordshire countryside, "waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall",[4] and claims to have once seen him himself. He entertains a doubt as to the scholar gypsy's still being alive after two centuries, but then shakes off the thought. He cannot have died:

For what wears out the life of mortal men?

'Tis that from change to change their being rolls:

'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,

Exhaust the energy of strongest souls,

And numb the elastic powers.

— Lines 142–146

The scholar gipsy, having renounced such a life, is

Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,

Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.

— Lines 164–165

and is therefore not subject to ageing and death. Arnold describes

...this strange disease of modern life,

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

— Lines 203–204

and implores the scholar gipsy to avoid all who suffer from it, in case he too should be infected and die. Arnold ends with an extended simile of a Tyrian merchant seaman who flees from the irruption of Greek competitors to seek a new world in Iberia.