Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/946

 MATTHEW ARNOLD

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 sec

Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep

And air-swept lindenb 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 bhade, And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies GlanviPs book Come, let me read the oft-read tale again:

The story of that Oxford scholar poor, Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tired of knocking at Preferment's door,

One summer morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the Gipsy-lore,

And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood. And came, as most men decm'd, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more. 914.

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