Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/419



THE SCHOLAR-GYPSY.17

, 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 cropped 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-blanched green,

Come, shepherd, and again renew 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 cruse,

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.