Others abide our question. Thou art free.We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,[p.116]5Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,Spares but the cloudy border of his baseTo the foil'd searching of mortality;And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know10Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,Didst tread on earth unguess'd at.—Better so!All pains the immortal spirit must endure,All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bowFind their sole speech in that victorious brow.
When I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,From this poor present self which I am now;When youth has done its tedious vain expenseOf passions that for ever ebb and flow;°5Shall I not joy° youth's heats° are left behind,°6And breathe more happy in an even clime°?—Ah no, for then I shall begin to findA thousand virtues in this hated time!Then I shall wish its agitations back,10And all its thwarting currents of desire;Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,°12And call this hurrying fever,° generous fire;And sigh that one thing only has been lentTo youth and age in common—discontent.
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°1That son of Italy° who tried to blow,°2Ere Dante° came, the trump of sacred song,°3In his light youth° amid a festal throngSate with his bride to see a public show.5Fair was the bride, and on her front did glowYouth like a star; and what to youth belong—Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong.A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo,'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay!10Shuddering, they drew her garments off—and found°11A robe of sackcloth° next the smooth, white skin.Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay,Radiant, adorn'd outside; a hidden groundOf thought and of austerity within.
Even in a palace, life may be led well!So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,°3Marcus Aurelius.° But the stifling denOf common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,5Our freedom for a little bread we sell,°6And drudge under some foolish° master's ken.°[p.118]°7Who rates° us if we peer outside our pen—Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?Even in a palace!On his truth sincere,10Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflameSome nobler, ampler stage of life to win,I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here!The aids to noble life are all within."
'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead°2Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,°And the pale weaver, through his windows seen°4In Spitalfields,° look'd thrice dispirited.5I met a preacher there I knew, and said:"Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?"—"Bravely!" said he; "for I of late have been,Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ,the living bread."O human soul! as long as thou canst so10Set up a mark of everlasting light,Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam—Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.
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°1Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square,°A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.A babe was in her arms, and at her sideA girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.5Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hiedAcross and begg'd, and came back satisfied.The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.Thought I: "Above her state this spirit towers;10She will not ask of aliens but of friends,Of sharers in a common human fate."She turns from that cold succour, which attendsThe unknown little from the unknowing great,And points us to a better time than ours."
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°1Goethe in Weimar sleeps,° and Greece,°2Long since, saw Byron's° struggle cease.But one such death remain'd to come;The last poetic voice is dumb—5We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.When Byron's eyes were shut in death,We bow'd our head and held our breath.He taught us little; but our soulHadfelthim like the thunder's roll.10With shivering heart the strife we sawOf passion with eternal law;And yet with reverential aweWe watch'd the fount of fiery lifeWhich served for that Titanic strife.15When Goethe's death was told, we said:Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.°17Physician of the iron age,°Goethe has done his pilgrimage.He took the suffering human race,[p.122]20He read each wound, each weakness clear;And struck his finger on the place,And said:Thou ailest here, and here!He look'd on Europe's dying hourOf fitful dream and feverish power;25His eye plunged down the weltering strife,The turmoil of expiring life—He said:The end is everywhere,Art still has truth, take refuge there!And he was happy, if to know30Causes of things, and far belowHis feet to see the lurid flowOf terror, and insane distress,And headlong fate, be happiness.And Wordsworth!—Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!35For never has such soothing voiceBeen to your shadowy world convey'd,Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade°38Heard the clear song of Orpheus° comeThrough Hades, and the mournful gloom.40Wordsworth has gone from us—and ye,Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!He too upon a wintry climeHad fallen—on this iron timeOf doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.45He found us when the age had boundOur souls in its benumbing round;He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.He laid us as we lay at birthOn the cool flowery lap of earth,50Smiles broke from us and we had ease;The hills were round us, and the breeze[p.123]Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.Our youth returned; for there was shed55On spirits that had long been dead,Spirits dried up and closely furl'd,The freshness of the early world.Ah! since dark days still bring to lightMan's prudence and man's fiery might,60Time may restore us in his courseGoethe's sage mind and Byron's force;But where will Europe's latter hourAgain find Wordsworth's healing power?Others will teach us how to dare,65And against fear our breast to steel;Others will strengthen us to bear—But who, ah! who, will make us feelThe cloud of mortal destiny?Others will front it fearlessly—70But who, like him, will put it by?Keep fresh the grass upon his grave°72O Rotha,° with thy living wave!Sing him thy best! for few or noneHears thy voice right, now he is gone.
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;°2Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes°!No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,[p.124]Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,5Nor the cropp'd herbage 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;°9Cross and recross° the strips of moon-blanch'd green,10Come, 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°13His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,°And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,15Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use—Here will I sit and wait,While to my ear from uplands far awayThe bleating of the folded flocks is borne,°19With distant cries of reapers in the corn°—20All 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 see25Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;And air-swept lindens yieldTheir scent, and rustle down their perfumed showersOf bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,And bower me from the August sun with shade;°30And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.°°31And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book°—Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!The story of the Oxford scholar poor,[p.125]Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,35Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,One summer-morn forsookHis 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,40But came to Oxford and his friends no more.But once, years after, in the country-lanes,°42Two scholars, whom at college erst° he knew,Met him, and of his way of life enquired;Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew,45His mates, had arts to rule as they desiredThe 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;°50But 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,55In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,The same the gipsies wore.°57Shepherds had met him on the Hurst° in spring;°58At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,°On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors60Had 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;[p.126]And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks65I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place;Or in my boat I lieMoor'd to the cool bank in the summer-heats,'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills.°69And watch the warm, green-muffled° Cumner hills,70And 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°74Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,°75Trailing 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 flowersPluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers80And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.And then they land, and thou art seen no more!—Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come;°83To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,°Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roamOr cross a stile into the public way.85Oft thou hast given them storeOf flowers—the frail-leaf'd, white anemony,Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer evesAnd purple orchises with spotted leaves—90But none hath words she can report of thee.°91And, above Godstow Bridge,° when hay-time's hereIn June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass[p.127]Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames,°95To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass,°Have often pass'd thee nearSitting upon the river bank o'ergrown;°98Mark'd thine outlandish° garb, thy figure spare,Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air—100But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone!At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills,Where at her open door the housewife darns,Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gateTo watch the threshers in the mossy barns.105Children, who early range these slopes and lateFor cresses from the rills,Have known thee eying, all an April-day,The springing pastures and the feeding kine;And mark'd thee, when the stars come out and shine,110Through the long dewy grass move slow away.°111In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood°—Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged wayPitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see°114With scarlet patches tagg'd° and shreds of grey,°115Above 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 strayRapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray,120And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.And once, in winter, on the causeway chillWhere home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,[p.128]Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge,Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,°125Thy face tow'rd Hinksey° and its wintry ridge?And thou hast climb'd the hill,And gain'd the white brow of the Cumner range;Turn'd once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall°129The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall°—°130Then sought thy straw in some sequester'd grange.But what—-I dream! Two hundred years are flownSince first thy story ran through Oxford halls,°133And the grave Glanvil° did the tale inscribeThat thou wert wander'd from the studious walls135To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe;And thou from earth art goneLong since, and in some quiet churchyard laid—Some country-nook, where o'er thy unknown graveTall grasses and white-flowering nettles wave°140Under 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,145Exhaust the energy of strongest soulsAnd numb the elastic powers.°147Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,°And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,°149To the just-pausing Genius° we remit150Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been.°151Thou hast not lived,° why should'st thou perish, so?°152Thou hadstoneaim,onebusiness,onedesire°;[p.129]Else wert thou long since number'd with the dead!Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!155The generations of thy peers are fled,And we ourselves shall go;But thou possessest an immortal lot,And we imagine thee exempt from ageAnd living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page,°160Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not.°For early didst thou leave the world, with powersFresh, undiverted to the world without,Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,°165Which 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;°170Who 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 will'd,Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,175Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd;For whom each year we seeBreeds new beginnings, disappointments new;Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—°180Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too°Yes, we await it!—but it still delays,And then we suffer! and amongst us one,[p.130]Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedlyHis seat upon the intellectual throne;185And all his store of sad experience heLays 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,°190And 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-lipp'd patience for our only friend,195Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair—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,200And every doubt long blown by time away.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,205Its head o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife—Fly hence, our contact fear!Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!°208Averse, as Dido° did with gesture stern°From her false friend's approach in Hades turn,210Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!Still nursing the unconquerable hope,°212Still clutching the inviolable shade,°[p.131]With a free, onward impulse brushing through,°214By night, the silver'd branches° of the glade—215Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,On some mild pastoral slopeEmerge, and resting on the moonlit palesFreshen thy flowers as in former yearsWith dew, or listen with enchanted ears,°220From 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,225Like us distracted, and like us unblest.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,230Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!°232—As some grave Tyrian° trader, from the sea,Descried at sunrise an emerging prowLifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily,235The fringes of a southward-facing brow°236Among the Ægæan isles°;And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,°238Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,°°239Green, bursting figs, and tunnies° steep'd in brine—240And knew the intruders on his ancient home,The young light-hearted masters of the waves—And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail;[p.132]And day and night held on indignantly°244O'er the blue Midland waters° with the gale,245Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,To where the Atlantic raves°247Outside the western straits°; and unbent sailsThere, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,°249Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come°;°250And on the beach undid his corded bales.°
°1How changed is here each spot man makes or fills°!°2In the two Hinkseys° nothing keeps the same;The village street its haunted mansion lacks,°4And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,°5And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks—°6Are ye too changed, ye hills°?See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar menTo-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!Here came I often, often, in old days—10Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crownsThe hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames°14The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs°?°15The Vale,° the three lone weirs,° the youthful Thames?—,This winter-eve is warm,Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,The tender purple spray on copse and briers!°19And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,°°20She needs not June for beauty's heightening,°Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power°23Befalls me wandering through this upland dim,°°24Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour°;25Now seldom come I, since I came with him.That single elm-tree brightAgainst 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;°30While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.°Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;And with the country-folk acquaintance madeBy barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.°35Here, too, our shepherd-pipes° we first assay'd.Ah me! this many a yearMy pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heartInto the world and wave of men depart;°40But Thyrsis of his own will went away.°°41It irk'd° him to be here, he could not rest.He loved each simple joy the country yields,°43He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,°For that a shadow lour'd on the fields,°45Here with the shepherds and the silly° sheep.Some life of men unblestHe knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.He went; his piping took a troubled soundOf storms° that rage outside our happy ground;°50He 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 day—When garden-walks and all the grassy floor°55With 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,Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:°60The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I°!Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?°62Soon will the high Midsummer pomps° come on,Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,65Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,And stocks in fragrant blow;Roses that down the alleys shine afar,And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,70And the full moon, and the white evening-star.°71He hearkens not! light comer,° he is flown!What matters it? next year he will return,And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days.With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,75And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,And scent of hay new-mown.°77But Thyrsis never more we swains° shall see;°78See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,°°79And blow a strain the world at last shall heed°—°80For Time, not Corydon,° hath conquer'd thee!Alack, for Corydon no rival now!—But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,Some good survivor with his flute would go,°84Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate°;°85And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,°And relax Pluto's brow,And make leap up with joy the beauteous head°88Of Proserpine,° among whose crowned hairAre flowers first open'd on Sicilian air,°90And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.°O easy access to the hearer's graceWhen Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,°94She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,°95She knew each lily white which Enna yields,°96Each rose with blushing face°;°97She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.°But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd;100And we should tease her with our plaint in vain!Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be,Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hourIn the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?105I know the wood which hides the daffodil,°106I know the Fyfield tree,°I know what white, what purple fritillariesThe grassy harvest of the river-fields,°109Above by Ensham,° down by Sandford,° yields,110And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?—But many a dingle on the loved hill-side,With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd treesWhere thick the cowslips grew, and far descried115High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises,Hath since our day put byThe coronals of that forgotten time;Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,And only in the hidden brookside gleam120Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.Where is the girl, who by the boatman's door,Above the locks, above the boating throng,°123Unmoor'd our skiff when through the Wytham flats,°Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among125And darting swallows and light water-gnats,We track'd the shy Thames shore?Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swellOf our boat passing heaved the river-grass,Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?—130They all are gone, and thou art gone as well!Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the nightIn ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.I see her veil draw soft across the day,I feel her slowly chilling breath invade°135The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent° with grey;I feel her finger lightLaid pausefully upon life's headlong train;—The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,The heart less bounding at emotion new,140And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.And long the way appears, which seem'd so shortTo the less practised eye of sanguine youth;And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,145Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!Unbreachable the fortOf the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,And near and real the charm of thy repose,°150And night as welcome as a friend would fall.°But hush! the upland hath a sudden lossOf quiet!—Look, adown the dusk hill-side,A troop of Oxford hunters going home,As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!°155From hunting with the Berkshire° hounds they come.Quick! let me fly, and crossInto yon farther field!—'Tis done; and see,Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorifyThe orange and pale violet evening-sky,160Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.165I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,Yet, happy omen, hail!°167Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale°(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keepThe morningless and unawakening sleep170Under the flowery oleanders pale),Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;°175To a boon southern country he is fled,°And now in happier air,°177Wandering with the great Mother's° train divine(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)180Within a folding of the Apennine,Thou hearest the immortal chants of old!—Putting his sickle to the perilous grainIn the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,For thee the Lityerses-song again185Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;Sings his Sicilian fold,His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes—And how a call celestial round him rang,And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang°190And all the marvel of the golden skies.°There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here°192Sole° in these fields! yet will I not despair.Despair I will not, while I yet descry'Neath the mild canopy of English air195That lonely tree against the western sky.Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee°198Fields where soft sheep° from cages pull the hay,Woods with anemonies in flower till May,°200Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?°A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,°202Shy to illumin; and I seek it too.°This does not come with houses or with gold,With place, with honour, and a flattering crew;205'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold—But the smooth-slipping weeksDrop by, and leave its seeker still untired;Out of the heed of mortals he is gone,He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;210Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest was bound;Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,215If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.And this rude Cumner ground,Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields,Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time,Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!220And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.What though the music of thy rustic fluteKept not for long its happy, country tone;Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy noteOf men contention-tost, of men who groan,225Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat—It fail'd, and thou wast mute!Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light,And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way,230Left human haunt, and on alone till night.Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,Thyrsis! in reach of sheep-bells is my home.Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar,235Let in thy voice a whisper often come,To chase fatigue and fear:Why faintest thou? I wandered till I died.Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.Dost thou ask proof? our tree yet crowns the hill,240Our scholar travels yet the loved hill-side.