Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/937

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

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.

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 Fy field 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;

1 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

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