Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/940

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

Wandering with the great Mother's train divine (And purer or more subtle soul than thee, I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see')

Within a folding of the Apcnnine,

Thou hearest the immortal strains of old. Putting his sickle to the perilous grain

In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, For thee the Lityerses song again

Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;

Sings his Sicilian fold, His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes;

And how a call celestial round him rang

And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang, And all the marvel of the golden skies.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here Sole in these fields; yet will I not despair;

Despair I will not, while I yet descry 'Ncath the soft canopy of English air

That lonely Tree against the western sky.

Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear, Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee'

Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay,

Woods with anemonies in flower till May, Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, Shy to illumine; and I seek it too.

This docs not come with houses or with gold, With place, with honour, and a flattering crew, 'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold.

But the smooth -slipping weeks

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