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,

Its heads o'ertax'd, 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 silver'd 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 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—
And snatch'd 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.

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-stacks— Are ye too changed, ye hills?

See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men

To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays! Here came I often, often, in old days— Thyrsis 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 crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The Vale, the three lone wears, the youthful
Thames?-

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!-
Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power
Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.
Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;
Now seldom come I, since I came with him.
That single elm-tree bright

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, But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick; And with the country-folk acquaintance made By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd. Ah me! this many a year

My pipe is lost, my shepherd's-holiday!

Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart,
But Thyrsis of his own will went away.

It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest.
He loved each simple joy the country yields,

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 day-
When 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,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze :
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-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, And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

He 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,
And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,
And scent of hay new-mown.

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,
Some good survivor with his flute would go,
Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate;

And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,
And relax Pluto's brow,

And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
Of Proserpine, among whose crowned 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 i