HOW 1 changed is here each spot man makes or fills! | |
| In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same; | |
| The village-street its haunted mansion lacks, | |
| And from the sign is gone Sibylla’s name, | |
| And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks; | 5 |
| Are ye too changed, ye hills? | |
| See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men | |
| To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays | |
| Here came I often, often, in old days; | |
| Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then. | 10 |
| |
| Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm, | |
| Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns | |
| The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames? | |
| The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs, | |
| The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?— | 15 |
| This winter-eve is warm, | |
| Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring, | |
| The tender purple spray on copse and briers; | |
| And that sweet City with her dreaming spires, | |
| She needs not June for beauty’s heightening, | 20 |
| |
| Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night! | |
| Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power | |
| Befalls me wandering through this upland dim; | |
| Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour, | |
| Now seldom come I, since I came with him. | 25 |
| That single elm-tree bright | |
| Against the west—I miss it! is it gone? | |
| We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, | |
| Our friend, the Scholar-Gipsy, was not dead; | |
| While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. | 30 |
| |
| Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here! | |
| But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick; | |
| And with the country-folk acquaintance made | |
| By barn in thresting-time, by new-built rick. | |
| Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay’d. | 35 |
| Ah me! this many a year | |
| My pipe is lost, my shepherd’s-holiday! | |
| Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart | |
| Into the world and wave of men depart; | |
| But Thyrsis of his own will went away. | 40 |
| |
| It irk’d him to be here, he could not rest. | |
| He loved each simple joy the country yields, | |
| He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep, | |
| For that a shadow lower’d on the fields, | |
| Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. | 45 |
| Some life of men unblest | |
| He knew, which made him droop, and fill’d his head. | |
| He went; his piping took a troubled sound | |
| Of storms that rage outside our happy ground; | |
| He could not wait their passing, he is dead! | 50 |
| |
| So, some tempestuous morn in early June, | |
| When the year’s primal burst of bloom is o’er, | |
| Before the roses and the longest day— | |
| When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor, | |
| With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, | 55 |
| And chestnut-flowers are strewn— | |
| So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry, | |
| From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, | |
| Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze: | |
| The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I. | 60 |
| |
| Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? | |
| Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, | |
| Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, | |
| Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, | |
| Sweet-William with its homely cottage-smell, | 65 |
| And stocks in fragrant blow; | |
| Roses that down the alleys shine afar, | |
| And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, | |
| And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, | |
| And the full moon, and the white evening-star. | 70 |
| |
| He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown! 2 | |
| What matters it? next year he will return, | |
| And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days, | |
| With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern, | |
| And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways, | 75 |
| And scent of hay new-mown. | |
| But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see! | |
| See him come back, and cut a smoother reed, | |
| And blow a strain the world at last shall heed— | |
| For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer’d thee. 3 | 80 |
| |
| Alack, for Corydon no rival now!— | |
| But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, | |
| Some good survivor with his flute would go, | |
| Piping a ditty sad for Bion’s fate, | |
| And cross the unpermitted ferry’s flow, | 85 |
| And relax 4 Pluto’s brow, | |
| And make leap up with joy the beauteous head | |
| Of Proserpine, among whose crownèd hair | |
| Are flowers, first open’d on Sicilian air, | |
| And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead. | 90 |
| |
| O easy access to the hearer’s grace | |
| When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine! | |
| For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, | |
| She knew the Dorian water’s gush divine, | |
| She knew each lily white which Enna yields, | 95 |
| Each rose with blushing face; | |
| She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain. | |
| But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard! | |
| Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr’d! | |
| And we should tease her with our plaint in vain. | 100 |
| |
| Well! wind-dispers’d and vain the words will be, | |
| Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour | |
| In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp’d hill! | |
| Who, if not I, for questing here hath power? | |
| I know the wood which hides the daffodil, | 105 |
| I know the Fyfield tree, | |
| I know what white, what purple fritillaries | |
| The grassy harvest of the river-fields, | |
| Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, | |
| And what sedg’d brooks are Thames’s tributaries; | 110 |
| |
| I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?— | |
| But many a dingle on the loved hill-side, | |
| With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom’d trees, | |
| Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried, | |
| High tower’d the spikes of purple orchises, | 115 |
| Hath since our day put by | |
| The coronals of that forgotten time. | |
| Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy’s team, | |
| And only in the hidden brookside gleam | |
| Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. | 120 |
| |
| Where is the girl, who, by the boatman’s door, | |
| Above the locks, above the boating throng, | |
| Unmoor’d our skiff, when, through the Wytham flats, | |
| Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among, | |
| And darting swallows, and light water-gnats, | 125 |
| We track’d the shy Thames shore? | |
| Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell | |
| Of our boat passing heav’d the river-grass, | |
| Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?— | |
| They all are gone, and thou art gone as well. | 130 |
| |
| Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night | |
| In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. | |
| I see her veil draw soft across the day, | |
| I feel her slowly chilling breath invade | |
| The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; | 135 |
| I feel her finger light | |
| Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train; | |
| The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, | |
| The heart less bounding at emotion new, | |
| And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again. | 140 |
| |
| And long the way appears, which seem’d so short | |
| To the unpractis’d eye of sanguine youth; | |
| And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air, | |
| The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth, | |
| Tops in life’s morning-sun so bright and bare! | 145 |
| Unbreachable the fort | |
| Of the long-batter’d world uplifts its wall. | |
| And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows, | |
| And near and real the charm of thy repose, | |
| And night as welcome as a friend would fall. | 150 |
| |
| But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss | |
| Of quiet;—Look! adown the dusk hill-side, | |
| A troop of Oxford hunters going home, | |
| As in old days, jovial and talking, ride! | |
| From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come— | 155 |
| Quick, let me fly, and cross | |
| Into yon further field!—’Tis done; and see, | |
| Back’d by the sunset, which doth glorify | |
| The orange and pale violet evening-sky, | |
| Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree! | 160 |
| |
| I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil, | |
| The white fog creeps from bush to bush about, | |
| The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright, | |
| And in the scatter’d farms the lights come out. | |
| I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night, | 165 |
| Yet, happy omen, hail! | |
| Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale | |
| (For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep | |
| The morningless and unawakening sleep | |
| Under the flowery oleanders pale), | 170 |
| |
| Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there!— | |
| Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim, | |
| These brambles pale with mist engarlanded, | |
| That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him. | |
| To a boon southern country he is fled, | 175 |
| And now in happier air, | |
| Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine | |
| (And purer or more subtle soul than thee, | |
| I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see!) | |
| Within a folding of the Apennine, | 180 |
| |
| Thou 5 hearest the immortal strains of old. | |
| Putting his sickle to the perilous grain | |
| In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, | |
| For thee the Lityerses song again | |
| Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing; | 185 |
| Sings his Sicilian fold, | |
| His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes; | |
| And how a call celestial round him rang | |
| And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang, | |
| And all the marvel of the golden skies. | 190 |
| |
| There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here | |
| Sole in these fields; yet will I not despair; | |
| Despair I will not, while I yet descry | |
| ’Neath the soft canopy of English air | |
| That lonely Tree against the western sky. | 195 |
| Still, still these slopes, ’tis clear, | |
| Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee! | |
| Fields where soft 6 sheep from cages pull the hay, | |
| Woods with anemonies in flower till May, | |
| Know him a wanderer still; then why not me? | 200 |
| |
| A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, | |
| Shy to illumine; and I seek it too. | |
| This does not come with houses or with gold, | |
| With place, with honour, and a flattering crew; | |
| ’Tis not in the world’s market bought and sold. | 205 |
| But the smooth-slipping weeks | |
| Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired; | |
| Out of the heed of mortals he is 7 gone, | |
| He wends unfollow’d, he must house alone; | |
| Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired. | 210 |
| |
| Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wert bound, | |
| Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour; | |
| Men gave thee nothing, but this happy quest, | |
| If men esteem’d thee feeble, gave thee power, | |
| If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest. | 215 |
| And this rude Cumner ground, | |
| Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields, | |
| Here cam’st thou in thy jocund youthful time, | |
| Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime; | |
| And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields. | 220 |
| |
| What though the music of thy rustic flute | |
| Kept not for long its happy, country tone, | |
| Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note | |
| Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, | |
| Which task’d thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat— | 225 |
| It fail’d, and thou wast 8 mute; | |
| Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light, | |
| And long with men of care thou couldst not stay, | |
| And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way, | |
| Left human haunt, and on alone till night. | 230 |
| |
| Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here! | |
| ’Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore, | |
| Thyrsis, in reach of sheep-bells is my home! | |
| Then through the great town’s harsh, heart-wearying roar, | |
| Let in thy voice a whisper often come, | 235 |
| To chase fatigue and fear: | |
| Why faintest thou? I wander’d till I died. | |
| Roam on! the light we sought is shining still. | |
| Dost thou ask proof? Our Tree yet crowns the hill, | |
| Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside. | 240 |
