Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Matthew Arnold. 18221888751. The Scholar-Gipsy
GO, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill; | |
Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes: | |
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, | |
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, | |
Nor the cropp’d grasses shoot another head. | 5 |
But when the fields are still, | |
And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, | |
And only the white sheep are sometimes seen | |
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch’d green; | |
Come Shepherd, and again begin the quest. | 10 |
Here, where the reaper was at work of late, | |
In this high field’s dark corner, where he leaves | |
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise, | |
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, | |
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use; | 15 |
Here will I sit and wait, | |
While to my ear from uplands far away | |
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, | |
With distant cries of reapers in the corn— | |
All the live murmur of a summer’s day. | 20 |
Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d field, | |
And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be. | |
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, | |
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see | |
Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep: | 25 |
And air-swept lindens yield | |
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers | |
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, | |
And bower me from the August sun with shade; | |
And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers: | 30 |
And near me on the grass lies Glanvil’s book— | |
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again: | |
The story of that Oxford scholar poor, | |
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, | |
Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door, | 35 |
One summer morn forsook | |
His friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore, | |
And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood, | |
And came, as most men deem’d, to little good, | |
But came to Oxford and his friends no more. | 40 |
But once, years after, in the country lanes, | |
Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, | |
Met him, and of his way of life inquired. | |
Whereat he answer’d that the Gipsy crew, | |
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired | 45 |
The workings of men’s brains; | |
And they can bind them to what thoughts they will: | |
‘And I,’ he said, ‘the secret of their art, | |
When fully learn’d, will to the world impart: | |
But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill!’ | 50 |
This said, he left them, and return’d no more, | |
But rumours hung about the country-side, | |
That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray, | |
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied, | |
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey, | 55 |
The same the Gipsies wore. | |
Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; | |
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors, | |
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock’d boors | |
Had found him seated at their entering, | 60 |
But ‘mid their drink and clatter, he would fly: | |
And I myself seem half to know thy looks, | |
And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace; | |
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks | |
I ask if thou hast pass’d their quiet place; | 65 |
Or in my boat I lie | |
Moor’d to the cool bank in the summer heats, | |
‘Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills, | |
And watch the warm green-muffled Cumnor hills, | |
And wonder if thou haunt’st their shy retreats. | 70 |
For most, I know, thou lov’st retirèd ground. | |
Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe, | |
Returning home on summer nights, have met | |
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe, | |
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, | 75 |
As the slow punt swings round: | |
And leaning backwards in a pensive dream, | |
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers | |
Pluck’d in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers, | |
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream: | 80 |
And then they land, and thou art seen no more. | |
Maidens who from the distant hamlets come | |
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May, | |
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, | |
Or cross a stile into the public way. | 85 |
Oft thou hast given them store | |
Of flowers—the frail-leaf’d, white anemone— | |
Dark bluebells drench’d with dews of summer eves, | |
And purple orchises with spotted leaves— | |
But none has words she can report of thee. | 90 |
And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time ‘s here | |
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames, | |
Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass | |
Where black-wing’d swallows haunt the glittering Thames, | |
To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass, | 95 |
Have often pass’d thee near | |
Sitting upon the river bank o’ergrown: | |
Mark’d thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, | |
Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air; | |
But, when they came from bathing, thou wert gone. | 100 |
At some lone homestead in the Cumnor hills, | |
Where at her open door the housewife darns, | |
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate | |
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns. | |
Children, who early range these slopes and late | 105 |
For cresses from the rills, | |
Have known thee watching, all an April day, | |
The springing pastures and the feeding kine; | |
And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and shine, | |
Through the long dewy grass move slow away. | 110 |
In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood, | |
Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edged way | |
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see | |
With scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of gray, | |
Above the forest-ground call’d Thessaly— | 115 |
The blackbird picking food | |
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all; | |
So often has he known thee past him stray | |
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither’d spray, | |
And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall. | 120 |
And once, in winter, on the causeway chill | |
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, | |
Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridge | |
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, | |
Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge? | 125 |
And thou hast climb’d the hill | |
And gain’d the white brow of the Cumnor range; | |
Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall, | |
The line of festal light in Christ Church hall— | |
Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d grange. | 130 |
But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flown | |
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls, | |
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe | |
That thou wert wander’d from the studious walls | |
To learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe: | 135 |
And thou from earth art gone | |
Long since and in some quiet churchyard laid; | |
Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown grave | |
Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave— | |
Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade. | 140 |
—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours. | |
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, | 145 |
And numb the elastic powers. | |
Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen, | |
And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, | |
To the just-pausing Genius we remit | |
Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been. | 150 |
Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so? | |
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire: | |
Else wert thou long since number’d with the dead— | |
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire. | |
The generations of thy peers are fled, | 155 |
And we ourselves shall go; | |
But thou possessest an immortal lot, | |
And we imagine thee exempt from age | |
And living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page, | |
Because thou hadst—what we, alas, have not! | 160 |
For early didst thou leave the world, with powers | |
Fresh, undiverted to the world without, | |
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; | |
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, | |
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. | 165 |
O Life unlike to ours! | |
Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, | |
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, | |
And each half lives a hundred different lives; | |
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. | 170 |
Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we, | |
Vague half-believers of our casual creeds, | |
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d, | |
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, | |
Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill’d; | 175 |
For whom each year we see | |
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; | |
Who hesitate and falter life away, | |
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— | |
Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too? | 180 |
Yes, we await it, but it still delays, | |
And then we suffer; and amongst us One, | |
Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly | |
His seat upon the intellectual throne; | |
And all his store of sad experience he | 185 |
Lays bare of wretched days; | |
Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs, | |
And how the dying spark of hope was fed, | |
And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, | |
And all his hourly varied anodynes. | 190 |
This for our wisest: and we others pine, | |
And wish the long unhappy dream would end, | |
And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear, | |
With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend, | |
Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair: | 195 |
But none has hope like thine. | |
Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, | |
Roaming the country-side, a truant boy, | |
Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, | |
And every doubt long blown by time away. | 200 |
O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, | |
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; | |
Before this strange disease of modern life, | |
With its sick hurry, its divided aims, | |
Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife— | 205 |
Fly hence, our contact fear! | |
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! | |
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern | |
From her false friend’s approach in Hades turn, | |
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude. | 210 |
Still nursing the unconquerable hope, | |
Still clutching the inviolable shade, | |
With a free onward impulse brushing through, | |
By night, the silver’d branches of the glade— | |
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, | 215 |
On some mild pastoral slope | |
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales, | |
Freshen they flowers, as in former years, | |
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears, | |
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales. | 220 |
But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! | |
For strong the infection of our mental strife, | |
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; | |
And we should win thee from they own fair life, | |
Like us distracted, and like us unblest. | 225 |
Soon, soon thy cheer would die, | |
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d they powers, | |
And they clear aims be cross and shifting made: | |
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, | |
Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours. | 230 |
Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! | |
—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, | |
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow | |
Lifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily, | |
The fringes of a southward-facing brow | 235 |
Among the Ægean isles; | |
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, | |
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, | |
Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine; | |
And knew the intruders on his ancient home, | 240 |
The young light-hearted Masters of the waves; | |
And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail, | |
And day and night held on indignantly | |
O’er the blue Midland waters with the gale, | |
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, | 245 |
To where the Atlantic raves | |
Outside the Western Straits, and unbent sails | |
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, | |
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; | |
And on the beach undid his corded bales. | 250 |