<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=37827" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Thyrsis</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!<br> In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;<br> The village street its haunted mansion lacks,<br> And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,<br> And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks--<br> Are ye too changed, ye hills?<br> See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men<br> To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!<br> Here came I often, often, in old days--<br> Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,<br> Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns<br> The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?<br> The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,<br> The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?--<br> This winter-eve is warm,<br> Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,<br> The tender purple spray on copse and briers!<br> And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,<br> She needs not June for beauty's heightening,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!--<br> Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power<br> Befalls me wandering through this upland dim.<br> Once passed I blindfold here, at any hour;<br> Now seldom come I, since I came with him.<br> That single elm-tree bright<br> Against the west - I miss it! is it goner?<br> We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,<br> Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;<br> While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,<br> But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;<br> And with the country-folk acquaintance made<br> By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.<br> Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assayed.<br> Ah me! this many a year<br> My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!<br> Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart<br> Into the world and wave of men depart;<br> But Thyrsis of his own will went away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It irked him to be here, he could not rest.<br> He loved each simple joy the country yields,<br> He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,<br> For that a shadow loured on the fields,<br> Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.<br> Some life of men unblest<br> He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.<br> He went; his piping took a troubled sound<br> Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;<br> He could not wait their passing, he is dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, some tempestuous morn in early June,<br> When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,<br> Before the roses and the longest day--<br> When garden-walks and all the grassy floor<br> With blossoms red and white of fallen May<br> And chestnut-flowers are strewn--<br> So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,<br> From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,<br> Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:<br>The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?<br> Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,<br> Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,<br> Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,<br> Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,<br> And stocks in fragrant blow;<br> Roses that down the alleys shine afar,<br> And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,<br> And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,<br> And the full moon, and the white evening-star.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!<br> What matters it? next year he will return,<br> And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days,<br> With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,<br> And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,<br> And scent of hay new-mown.<br> But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see;<br> See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,<br> And blow a strain the world at last shall heed--<br> For Time, not Corydon, hath conquered thee!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alack, for Corydon no rival now!--<br> But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,<br> Some good survivor with his flute would go,<br> Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate;<br> And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,<br> And relax Pluto's brow,<br> And make leap up with joy the beauteous head<br> Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair<br> Are flowers first opened on Sicilian air,<br> And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O easy access to the hearer's grace<br> When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!<br> For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,<br> She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,<br> She knew each lily white which Enna yields<br> Each rose with blushing face;<br> She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.<br> But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!<br> Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd;<br> And we should tease her with our plaint in vain!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be,<br> Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour<br> In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!<br> Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?<br> I know the wood which hides the daffodil,<br> I know the Fyfield tree,<br> I know what white, what purple fritillaries<br> The grassy harvest of the river-fields,<br> Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,<br> And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?--<br> But many a tingle on the loved hillside,<br> With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees,<br> Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried<br> High towered the spikes of purple orchises,<br> Hath since our day put by<br> The coronals of that forgotten time;<br> Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,<br> And only in the hidden brookside gleam<br> Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where is the girl, who by the boatman's door,<br> Above the locks, above the boating throng,<br> Unmoored our skiff when through the Wytham flats,<br> Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among<br> And darting swallows and light water-gnats,<br> We tracked the shy Thames shore?<br> Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell<br> Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,<br> Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?--<br> They all are gone, and thou art gone as well!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night<br> In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.<br> I see her veil draw soft across the day,<br> I feel her slowly chilling breath invade<br> The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;<br> I feel her finger light<br> Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; --<br> The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,<br> The heart less bounding at emotion new,<br> And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And long the way appears, which seem'd so short<br> To the less practised eye of sanguine youth;<br> And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,<br> The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,<br> Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!<br> Unbreachable the fort<br> Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;<br> And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,<br> And near and real the charm of thy repose,<br> And night as welcome as a friend would fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss<br> Of quiet! - Look, adown the dusk hill-side,<br> A troop of Oxford hunters going home,<br> As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!<br> From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come.<br> Quick! let me fly, and cross<br> Into yon farther field! - 'Tis done; and see,<br> Backed by the sunset, which doth glorify<br> The orange and pale violet evening-sky,<br> Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,<br> The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,<br> The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,<br> And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.<br> I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,<br> Yet, happy omen, hail!<br> Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale<br> (For there thine earth forgetting eyelids keep<br> The morningless and unawakening sleep<br> Under the flowery oleanders pale),</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!--<br> Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,<br> These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,<br> That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;<br> To a boon southern country he is fled,<br> And now in happier air,<br> Wandering with the great Mother's train divine<br> (And purer or more subtle soul than thee,<br> I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)<br> Within a folding of the Apennine,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou hearest the immortal chants of old!--<br> Putting his sickle to the perilous grain<br> In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,<br> For thee the Lityerses-song again<br> Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;<br> Sings his Sicilian fold,<br> His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes--<br> And how a call celestial round him rang,<br> And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang,<br> And all the marvel of the golden skies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here<br> Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair.<br> Despair I will not, while I yet descry<br> 'Neath the mild canopy of English air<br> That lonely tree against the western sky.<br> Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,<br> Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee!<br> Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay,<br> Woods with anemonies in flower till May,<br> Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,<br> Shy to illumine; and I seek it too.<br> This does not come with houses or with gold,<br> With place, with honour, and a flattering crew;<br> 'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold--<br> But the smooth-slipping weeks<br> Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;<br> Out of the heed of mortals he is gone,<br> He wends unfollowed, he must house alone;<br> Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest wast bound;<br> Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!<br> Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,<br> If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power,<br> If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.<br> And this rude Cumner ground,<br> Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields,<br> Here cams't thou in thy jocund youthful time,<br> Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!<br> And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What though the music of thy rustic flute<br> Kept not for long its happy, country tone;<br> Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note<br> Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,<br> Which tasked thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat--<br> It failed, and thou wage mute!<br> Yet hadst thou always visions of our light,<br> And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,<br> And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way,<br> Left human haunt, and on alone till night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!<br> 'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,<br> Thyrsis! in reach of sheep-bells is my home.<br> Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar,<br> Let in thy voice a whisper often come,<br> To chase fatigue and fear:<br>Why faintest thou! I wander'd till I died.<br>Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.<br>Dost thou ask proof? Our tree yet crowns the hill,<br>Our Scholar travels yet the loved hill-side.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Matthew+Arnold">Matthew Arnold</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=37827" data-title="Thyrsis de Matthew Arnold" data-description="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 ..."></div> </div> </div>

solid border dashed border dotted border double border groove border ridge border inset border outset border no border blue green red purple cyan gold silver black