Bulchevy's Book of English Verse Part 139

--What forms are these coming So white through the gloom?

What garments out-glistening The gold-flower'd broom?

What sweet-breathing Presence Out-perfumes the thyme?

What voices enrapture The night's balmy prime?--

'Tis Apollo comes leading His choir, The Nine.

--The Leader is fairest, But all are divine.

They are lost in the hollows.

They stream up again.

What seeks on this mountain The glorified train?--

They bathe on this mountain, In the spring by their road.

Then on to Olympus, Their endless abode.

--Whose praise do they mention: Of what is it told?-- What will be for ever.

What was from of old.

First hymn they the Father Of all things: and then, The rest of Immortals, The action of men.

The Day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The Night in her silence, The Stars in their calm.

Matthew Arnold. 1822-1888

749. To Marguerite

YES: in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown.

Dotting the sh.o.r.eless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing; And lovely notes, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, Across the sounds and channels pour;

O then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent!

For surely once, they feel, we were Parts of a single continent.

Now round us spreads the watery plain-- O might our marges meet again!

Who order'd that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd?

Who renders vain their deep desire?-- A G.o.d, a G.o.d their severance ruled; And bade betwixt their sh.o.r.es to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

Matthew Arnold. 1822-1888

750. Requiescat

STREW on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew.

In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too.

Her mirth the world required: She bathed it in smiles of glee.

But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and sound.

But for peace her soul was yearning, And now peace laps her round.

Her cabin'd, ample Spirit, It flutter'd and fail'd for breath.

To-night it doth inherit The vasty hall of Death.

Matthew Arnold. 1822-1888

751. 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 gra.s.ses shoot another head.

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.

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; 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.

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: And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent gra.s.s where I am laid, And bower me from the August sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers:

And near me on the gra.s.s 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, 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.

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 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!'

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, The same the Gipsies wore.

Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring; At some lone alehouse in the Berks.h.i.+re moors, On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors Had found him seated at their entering,

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 pa.s.s'd their quiet place; Or in my boat I lie Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer heats, 'Mid wide gra.s.s meadows which the suns.h.i.+ne fills, And watch the warm green-m.u.f.fled c.u.mnor hills, And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired 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, 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:

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.

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.

And, above G.o.dstow Bridge, when hay-time 's here In June, and many a scythe in suns.h.i.+ne flames, Men who through those wide fields of breezy gra.s.s Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pa.s.s, Have often pa.s.s'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.

At some lone homestead in the c.u.mnor 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 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 s.h.i.+ne, Through the long dewy gra.s.s move slow away.

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-- 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.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, Have I not pa.s.s'd thee on the wooden bridge Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge?

And thou hast climb'd the hill And gain'd the white brow of the c.u.mnor 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.

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: And thou from earth art gone Long since and in some quiet churchyard laid; Some country nook, where o'er thy unknown grave Tall gra.s.ses and white flowering nettles wave-- Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree's shade.