Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/936

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

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 y 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 its 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" 1 next year he will return,

And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days, With whitening hedges, and uncrumplmg fern,

And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,

And scent of hay new-mown. But Thyrsis never more we swains shall sec'

See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,

And blow a strain the world at last shall heed For 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,

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