THE SCHOLAR-GIPSY.4 Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, But when the fields are still, And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, green, Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest! Here, where the reaper was at work of late- While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, With distant cries of reapers in the cornAll the live murmur of a summer's day. Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep; And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers. And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book- The story of the Oxford scholar poor, Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore, And roam'd the world with that wild brother hood, 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, 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. 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 Berkshire 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 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; 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 Cumner hills, And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats. For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground! Returning home on summer-nights, have met Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe, Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet, As the punt's rope chops round; And leaning backward in a pensive dream, And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers bowers, And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream. And then they land, and thou art seen no more!- 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 anemony, Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves, And purple orchises with spotted leaves— But none hath words she can report of thee. And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here grass Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, |