O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife- Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Still nursing the unconquerable hope, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, And thy 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. 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 Among the Egæan 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, The young light-hearted masters of the waves— 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. THYRSIS.18 A MONODY, to commemorate the author's friend, ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, who died at Florence, 1861. How 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-stacksAre ye too changed, ye hills? See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays! Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm, 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, Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night !— Against the west-I miss it! is it gone? We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead; While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here, My pipe is lost, my shepherd's-holiday! Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest. 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. 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. So, some tempestuous morn in early June, When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, Before the roses and the longest dayWhen garden-walks, and all the grassy floor, With blossoms red and white of fallen May, And chestnut-flowers are strewn So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown! 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 heedFor Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee! Alack, for Corydon no rival now!— But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow, And make leap up with joy the beauteous head O easy access to the hearer's grace When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine! For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain. |