The Scholar-Gipsy

By Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). For more information, see Wikipedia.

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 grasses shoot another head.        5
      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 renew the quest.        10

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 cruise,
  And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
    Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use;        15
      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.        20

Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d field,
  And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be.
    Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
  And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
    Pale blue convolvulus° in tendrils creep:        25
      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:        30

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil’s° book—
  Come, let me read the oft-read tale again:
    The story of that Oxford scholar poor,
  Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
    Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door,        35
      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.        40

But once, years after, in the country lanes,
  Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,
    Met him, and of his way of life inquired.
  Whereat he answer’d, that the Gipsy crew,
    His mates, had arts to rule as they desired        45
      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!’        50

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 grey,        55
      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,        60

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 passed their quiet place;        65
      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 Cumnor° hills,
  And wonder if thou haunt’st their shy retreats.        70

For most, I know, thou lov’st retirèd ground.
  Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,
    Returning home on summer nights, have met
  Crossing the stripling° Thames at Bablock-hithe°,
    Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,        75
      As the slow punt° swings round:
  And leaning backwards 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:        80

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.        85
      Oft thou hast given them store
  Of flowers—the frail-leaf’d, white anemone°—
    Dark bluebells° drench’d with dews of summer eves,
    And purple orchises° with spotted leaves—
  But none has words she can report of thee.        90

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,        95
      Have often pass’d thee near
  Sitting upon the river bank o’ergrown:
    Mark’d thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,
    Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air;
  But, when they came from bathing, thou wert gone.        100

At some lone homestead in the Cumnor hills,
  Where at her open door the housewife darns°,
    Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate
  To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.
    Children, who early range these slopes and late        105
      For cresses from the rills,
  Have known thee watching, all an April day,
    The springing pastures and the feeding kine°,
    And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and shine,
  Through the long dewy grass move slow away.        110

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood°,
  Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edged way
    Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see
  With scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of gray,
    Above the forest-ground call’d Thessaly—        115
      The blackbird picking food
  Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;
    So often has he known thee past him stray
    Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither’d spray,
  And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall.        120

And once, in winter, on the causeway° chill
  Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
    Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridge
  Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
    Thy face towards Hinksey° and its wintry ridge?        125
      And thou hast climb’d the hill
  And gain’d the white brow of the Cumnor range;
    Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,
    The line of festal light in Christ Church hall—
  Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d grange°.        130

But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flown
  Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls,
    And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe
  That thou wert wander’d from the studious walls
    To learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe:        135
      And thou from earth art gone
  Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid;
    Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown grave
    Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave—
  Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade.        140

—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours.
  For what wears out the life of mortal men?
    ’Tis that from change to change their being rolls:
  ’Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
    Exhaust the energy of strongest souls,        145
      And numb the elastic powers.
  Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen°,
    And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,
    To the just-pausing Genius we remit
  Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been.        150

Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?
  Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire:
    Else wert thou long since number’d with the dead—
  Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire.
    The generations of thy peers are fled,        155
      And we ourselves shall go;
  But thou possessest an immortal lot,
    And we imagine thee exempt from age
    And living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page,
  Because thou hadst—what we, alas, have not!        160

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
  Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
    Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
  Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,
    Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.        165
      O Life unlike to ours!
  Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
    Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
    And each half lives a hundred different lives;
  Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.        170

Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we,
  Vague half-believers of our casual creeds,
    Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,
  Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
    Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill’d;        175
      For whom each year we see
  Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
    Who hesitate and falter life away,
    And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—
  Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?        180

Yes, we await it, but it still delays,
  And then we suffer; and amongst us One,
    Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedly
  His seat upon the intellectual throne;
    And all his store of sad experience he        185
      Lays bare of wretched days;
  Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs,
    And how the dying spark of hope was fed,
    And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,
  And all his hourly varied anodynes°.        190

This for our wisest: and we others pine,
  And wish the long unhappy dream would end,
    And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear,
  With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend,
    Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair:        195
      But none has hope like thine.
  Thou thro’ the fields and thro’ the woods dost stray,
    Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,
    Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,
  And every doubt long blown by time away.        200

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
  And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
    Before this strange disease of modern life,
  With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
    Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife—        205
      Fly hence, our contact fear!
  Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!
    Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern
    From her false friend’s approach in Hades turn,
  Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.        210

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
  Still clutching the inviolable shade,
    With a free onward impulse brushing through,
  By night, the silver’d branches of the glade—
    Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,        215
      On some mild pastoral slope
  Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,
    Freshen thy flowers, as in former years,
    With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
  From the dark dingles°, to the nightingales.        220

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
  For strong the infection of our mental strife,
    Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for° rest;
  And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
    Like us distracted, and like us unblest.        225
      Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
  Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d thy powers,
    And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made:
    And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,
  Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.        230

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
  —As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
    Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
  Lifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily,
    The fringes of a southward-facing brow        235
      Among the Ægean isles;
  And saw the merry Grecian coaster° come,
    Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
    Green bursting figs, and tunnies° steep’d in brine;
  And knew the intruders on his ancient home,        240

The young light-hearted Masters of the waves;
  And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail,
    And day and night held on indignantly
  O’er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
    Betwixt the Syrtes° and soft Sicily,        245
      To where the Atlantic raves
  Outside the Western Straits, and unbent sails
    There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
    Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
  And on the beach undid his corded bales°.        250


Notes

Line 2: cote. Shelter or enclosure for small livestock.

Line 4: bawl. Cry out lustily.

Line 4: rack. Strain.

Line 25: convolvulus. Genus of flowering plants with trumpet-shaped flowers.

Line 26: linden. Type of shade tree.

Line 31: Glanvil. Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680), English writer, philosopher and clergyman.

Line 57: Hurst. A village in Berkshire.

Line 59: ingle. A hearth or the fire therein.

Line 59: smock. Protective overgarment.

Line 64: rook. Black European crow.

Line 69: Cumnor. A village west of Oxford.

Line 74: stripling. A youth.

Line 74: Bablock-hithe. Bablock Hythe, a small hamlet west of Oxford.

Line 76: punt. A small, shallow boat.

Line 79: Wychwood. An area in Oxfordshire.

Line 83: Fyfield. A village in Oxfordshire.

Line 85: stile. Steps or rungs to admit passage to humans, but not to livestock.

Line 87: anemone. Genus of colorful flowers of the buttercup family.

Line 88: bluebell. Any of several blue, bell-shaped flowers.

Line 89: orchis. Orchid.

Line 91: Godstow Bridge. Bridge at Godstow, near Oxford, over the River Thames.

Line 102: darn. Mend (clothing) with rows of stitches.

Line 108: kine. Plural of cow.

Line 111: Bagley Wood. A wood in Oxfordshire.

Line 121: causeway. Elevated road.

Line 125: Hinksey. Place name associated with Oxford.

Line 130: grange. Farm.

Line 147: teen. Sorrow.

Line 190: anodyne. Pain-killer.

Line 220: dingle. Narrow, shady dell.

Line 223: spoil for. Crave.

Line 237: coaster. Coastwise trading ship.

Line 239: tunnies. Tuna.

Line 245: Syrtes. Two Libyan gulfs, proverbially dangerous for shipping.

Line 250: bale. Large bundle or package of freight.