The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills,

TO And 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

Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,8

4. Of rich conception, many ideas. 7. Crows. 5. A hill near Oxford. All the place-names in the 8. Or Bablock Hythe (a hitlie or hythe is a landing poem (except those in the final two stanzas) refer place on a river). "The stripling Thames": the narto the countryside near Oxford. row upper reaches of the river before it broadens 6. Rustics. "Ingle-bench": fireside bench. out to its full width.

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136 4 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,

As the punt's rope chops round;9

And leaning backward in a pensive dream,

And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers

Plucked in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,

And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!�

Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come

To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,

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-leafed, white anemone,

Dark bluebells drenched 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

In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,

Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass

Where black-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames,

To bathe in the abandoned lasher1 pass,

Have often passed thee near

Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown;

Marked thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,

Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air�

But, 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 gate

To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.

Children, who early range these slopes and late

For cresses from the rills,

Have known thee eying, all an April day,

The springing pastures and the feeding kine;� cattle

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 grey,

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,

9. The scholar's flat-bottomed boat ("punt") is tied of the boat as it is stirred by the current of the river up by a rope at the riverbank near the ferry crossing causes the chopping sound of the rope in the like the speaker's boat (in the previous stanza), water. which was "moored to the cool bank." The motion 1. Water that spills over a dam or weir.

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THE SCHOLAR GYPSY / 1365

Rapt, twirling in thy hand a withered spray,

120 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,

Wrapped in thy cloak and battling with the snow,

125 Thy face tow'rd 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 hall2� 130 Then sought thy straw in some sequestered grange.0 farmhouse

But what�I dream! Two hundred years are flown

Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls,

And the grave Glanvill did the tale inscribe

That thou wert wandered from the studious walls

135 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,

140 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,

145 Exhaust the energy of strongest souls

And numb the elastic powers.

Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,� vexation And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,

To the just-pausing Genius3 we remit

150 Our worn-out life, and are�what we have been. Thou hast not lived, why should'st 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!

155 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 Glanvill's page,

i6o 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;