Page images
PDF
EPUB

Still with his soul severe account he kept,
Weeping all debts out ere he slept :
Then down in peace and innocence he lay,
Like the sun's laborious light,

Which still in water sets at night,
Unsullied with his journey of the day.

Wondrous young man! why wert thou made so good,

To be snatched hence ere better understood?
Snatched before half of thee enough was seen!
Thou ripe, and yet thy life but green!
Nor could thy friends take their last sad
farewell;

But danger and infectious death
Maliciously seized on that breath

Where life, spirit, pleasure, always used to
dwell.

But happy thou, ta'en from this frantic age,
Where ignorance and hypocrisy does rage!
A fitter time for heaven no soul ere chose,

128

136

The place now only free from those. There 'mong the blest thou dost for ever shine, And wheresoe'er thou cast'st thy view,

Upon that white and radiant crew,

Seest not a soul clothed with more light than

thine.

144

And if the glorious saints cease not to know Their wretched friends who fight with life below,

Thy flame to me does still the same abide,
Only more pure and rarified.

There, whilst immortal hymns thou dost
rehearse,

Thou dost with holy pity see
Our dull and earthly poesy,

Where grief and misery can be joined with

verse.

1656.

152

Abraham Cowley.

THYRSIS

A MONODY, to commemorate the author's friend, ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, who died at Florence, 1861

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!

In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same:
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-
'stacks-

Are ye too changed, ye hills?

See, 't is no foot of unfamiliar men

To-night from Oxford up your pathway

strays!

Here came I often, often, in old daysThyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

10

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 signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs, The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?

This winter-eve is warm,

Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and

briars!

And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty's heightening. 20

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—
Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power
Befalls me wandering through this upland

dim.

Once pass'd 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 Gipsy-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;

30

And with the country-folk acquaintance
made

By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.

Ah me! this many a year

My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday! Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy

heart

Into the world and wave of men depart; But Thyrsis of his own will went away.

It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest.
He loved each simple joy the country yields,
He loved his mates; but yet he could not

keep,

For that a shadow lour'd on the fields,

Here with the shepherds and the silly

sheep.

Some life of men unblest

He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd
his head.

He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy

happy ground;

40

He could not wait their passing, he is dead. 50

So, some tempestuous morn in early June. When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, Before the roses and the longest day

When garden-walks and all the grassy floor

With blossoms red and white of fallen May
And chestnut-flowers are strewn-

So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet-field, through the vext garden-

[blocks in formation]

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, Soon will the musk carnations break and

swell,

Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet-William with his homely cottagesmell,

And stocks in fragrant blow;

Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,

And groups under the dreaming garden

trees,

And the full moon, and the white evening

star.

He harkens not! light comer, he is flown!
What matters it? next year he will return,
And we shall have him in the sweet

[ocr errors][merged small]

70

With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern, And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways, And scent of hay new-mown.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »