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Have known thee watching, all an April day,

The springing pastures and the feeding kine;

And marked thee, when the stars come out and shine, Through the long dewy grass move slow away.

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley-wood,
Where most the gypsies by the turf-edged way
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see
With scarlet patches tagged and shreds of gray,
Above the forest-ground called 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 withered spray,
And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill

Where home through flooded fields foot-travelers go,
Have I not passed thee on the wooden bridge,
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
Thy face toward Hinksey and its wintry ridge?
And thou hast climbed the hill

And gained the white brow of the Cumner range;
Turned once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall—
Then sought thy straw in some sequestered 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 wandered from the studious walls
To learn strange arts, and join a gypsy 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 grasses and white flowering nettles wave— Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree's shade.

—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,

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 well-worn life, and are—what we have been!

Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire!

Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead—
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!
The generations of thy peers are fled,

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!

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.

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.

Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,

Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled;
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?

Yes! we await it, but it still delays,

And then we suffer! and amongst us one,
Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne;
And all his store of sad experience he
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.

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-lipped patience for our only friend,
Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair;
But none has hope like thine!

Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, Roaming the countryside, a truant boy,

Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, And every doubt long blown by time away.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gayly as the sparkling Thames;

Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife-
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!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,

Still clutching the inviolable shade,

With a free onward impulse brushing through,
By night, the silvered branches of the glade—
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,
On some mild pastoral slope

Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,
Freshen thy flowers, as in former years,
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales!

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 thy own fair life,

Like us distracted, and like us unblest!

Soon, soon thy cheer would die,

Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfixed 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-haired creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow
Among the Ægean isles;

And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green bursting figs, and tunnies steeped in brine;
And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light-hearted masters of the waves;
And snatched 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,

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.

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