Collected English Verse — Matthew Arnold. b. 1822, d. 1888 (Part 6 of 9)

Pluto’s brow,
  And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
   Of Proserpine, among whose crownéd hair
   Are flowers, first open’d on Sicilian air,
And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.

O easy access to the hearer’s grace
  When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!
   For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,
  She knew the Dorian water’s gush divine,
   She knew each lily white which Enna yields,
    Each rose with blushing face;
  She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.
   But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!
   Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr’d!
And we should tease her with our plaint in vain.

Well! wind-dispers’d and vain the words will be,
  Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
   In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp’d hill!
  Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
   I know the wood which hides the daffodil,
    I know the Fyfield tree,
  I know what white, what purple fritillaries
   The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
   Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,
And what sedg’d 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 trees,
  Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried,
   High tower’d the spikes of purple orchises,
    Hath since our day put by
  The coronals of that forgotten time.
   Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy’s team,
   And only in the hidden brookside gleam
Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl, who, by the boatman’s door,
  Above the locks, above the boating throng,
   Unmoor’d our skiff, when, through the Wytham flats,
  Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among,
   And darting swallows, and light water-gnats,
    We track’d the shy Thames shore?
  Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell
   Of our boat passing heav’d the river-grass,
   Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?—
They are all gone, and thou art gone as well.

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
  In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
   I see her veil draw soft across the day,
  I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
   The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;
    I feel her finger light
  Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train;
   The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
   The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again.

And long the way appears, which seem’d so short
  To the unpractis’d eye of sanguine youth;
   And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,
  The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,
   Tops in life’s morning- sun so bright and bare!
    Unbreachable the fort
  Of 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,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall.

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss
  Of quiet;—Look! adown the dusk hill-side,
   A troop of Oxford hunters going home,
  As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!
   From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come—
    Quick, let me fly, and cross
  Into yon further field!—’Tis done; and see,
   Back’d by the sunset, which doth glorify
   The orange and pale violet evening-sky,
Bare 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.
   I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night,
    Yet, happy omen, hail!
  Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale
   (For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep
   The morningless and unawakening sleep
Under 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.
   To a boon southern country he is fled,
    And now in happier air,
  Wandering with the great Mother’s train divine
   (And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
   I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see!)
Within a folding of the Apennine,