Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/428

390 See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men

To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!

Here came I often, often, in old days,—

Thyrsis and I: we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,

Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns

The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?

The single-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,

The Vale, the three lone wears, the youthful Thames?

This winter-eve is warm;

Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring,

The tender purple spray on copse and briers;

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,

She needs not June for beauty's heightening.

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—

Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power

Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.

Once passed I blindfold here, at any hour;

Now seldom come I, since I came with him.

That single elm-tree bright

Against the west—I miss it! is it gone?

We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,

Our friend the Gypsy-Scholar was not dead;

While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,

But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;

And with the country-folk acquaintance made

By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.

Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assayed.

Ah me! this many a year

My pipe is lost, my shepherd's-holiday!