Though not a whisper of her voice he hear,
The buried bulb does know

The signals of the year,

And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.

C. Patmore

XXXI

LYNMOUTH

Around my love and me the brooding hills,
Full of delicious murmurs, rise on high,
Closing upon this spot the summer fills,
And over which there rules the summer sky.

Behind us on the shore down there the sea
Roars roughly, like a fierce pursuing hound;
But all this hour is calm for her and me;

And now another hill shuts out the sound.

And now we breathe the odours of the glen,
And round about us are enchanted things;
The bird that hath blithe speech unknown to men,
The river keen, that hath a voice and sings.

The tree that dwells with one ecstatic thought,
Wider and fairer growing year by year,
The flower that flowereth and knoweth nought,
The bee that scents the flower and draweth near.

Our path is here, the rocky winding ledge

That sheer o'erhangs the rapid shouting stream;
Now dips down smoothly to the quiet edge,
Where restful waters lie as in a dream.

The green exuberant branches overhead
Sport with the golden magic of the sun,
Here quite shut out, here like rare jewels shed
To fright the glittering lizards as they run.

And wonderful are all those mossy floors

Spread out beneath us in some pathless place, Where the sun only reaches and outpours

His smile, where never a foot hath left a trace.

And there are perfect nooks that have been made

By the long growing tree, through some chance turn Its trunk took; since transform'd with scent and shade And fill'd with all the glory of the fern.

And tender-tinted wood flowers are seen,

Clear starry blooms and bells of pensive blue,
That lead their delicate lives there in the green-
What were the world if it should lose their hue?

Even o'er the rough out-jutting stone that blocks
The narrow way some cunning hand hath strewn
The moss in rich adornment, and the rocks
Down there seem written thick with many a rune.

And here, upon that stone, we rest awhile,
For we can see the lovely river's fall,
And wild and sweet the place is to beguile
My love, and keep her till I tell her all.

A. O'Shaughnessy

XXXII

THE SONG OF EMPEDOCLES

And you, ye stars,

Who slowly begin to marshal,

As of old, in the fields of heaven,

Your distant, melancholy lines!

Have you, too, survived yourselves?

Are you, too, what I fear to become?
You, too, once lived;

You too moved joyfully

Among august companions,

In an older world, peopled by Gods,

In a mightier order,

The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.

But now, ye kindle

Your lonely, cold-shining lights,
Unwilling lingerers

In the heavenly wilderness,
For a younger, ignoble world;
And renew, by necessity,
Night after night your courses,
In echoing, unnear'd silence,
Above a race you know not-
Uncaring and undelighted,⚫
Without friend and without home;
Weary like us, though not

Weary with our weariness.

M. Arnold

XXXIII

THE SCHOLAR-GIPSY

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head.
But when the fields are still,

And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,

And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd

green,

Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest !

Here, where the reaper was at work of late-
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to

use

Here will I sit and wait,

While to my ear from uplands far away

The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
With distant cries of reapers in the corn-

All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be.

Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;

And air-swept lindens yield

Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book-
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook

His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore,
And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deem'd, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country-lanes,
Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,
Met him, and of his way of life enquired;
Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew,
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired
The workings of men's brains,

And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. 'And I,' he said, 'the secret of their art,

When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' This said, he left them, and return'd no more.But rumours hung about the country-side,

That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of gray,
The same the gipsies wore.

Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors
Had found him seated at their entering,

But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And I myself seem half to know thy looks,

And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place;
Or in my boat I lie

Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer-heats,
'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,
And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills,
And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground!
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,

Returning home on summer-nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt's rope chops round;

And leaning backward in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood
bowers,

And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!-
Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam,
Or cross a stile into the public way.

Oft thou hast given them store

Of flowers-the frail-leaf'd, white anemony,

Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer

eves,

And purple orchises with spotted leavesBut none hath words she can report of thee.

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,

Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames,

To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass,

Have often pass'd thee near