Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/919

 751. The Scholar-Gipsy

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill; Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes: No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropp'd grasses 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 Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd green; Come, 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 His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise, And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use; Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, With distant cries of reapers in the corn— All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep: And air-swept lindens yield Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid, And bower me from the August sun with shade; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers: