Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/433

Rh I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,

The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,

The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,

And in the scattered farms the lights come out.

I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,

Yet, happy omen, hail!

Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale

(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep

The morningless and unawakening sleep

Under the flowery oleanders pale);

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—

Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,

These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,

That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him:

To a boon southern country he is fled,

And now in happier air,

Wandering with the great Mother's train divine

(And purer or more subtile soul than thee,

I trow the mighty Mother doth not see)

Within a folding of the Apennine,—

Thou hearest the immortal chants 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;19

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.