Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/431

Rh Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be;

Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour

In the old haunt, and find our tree-topped hill!

Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?

I know the wood which hides the daffodil;

I know the Fyfield tree;

I know what white, what purple fritillaries

The grassy harvest of the river-fields,

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields;

And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;

I know these slopes: who knows them if not I?

But many a dingle on the loved hillside,

With thorns once studded, old white-blossomed trees,

Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried

High towered the spikes of purple orchises,

Hath since our day put by

The coronals of that forgotten time;

Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,

And only in the hidden brookside gleam

Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl who by the boatman's door,

Above the locks, above the boating throng,

Unmoored our skiff when through the Wytham flats,

Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among,

And darting swallows and light water-gnats,

We tracked the shy Thames shore?

Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell

Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,

Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?—

They all are gone, and thou art gone as well!