By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assayed.
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 irked 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 lowered on the fields,

Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep.

Some life of men unblest

He knew, which made him droop, and filled his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing, he is dead!

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-trees,

Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze: The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I.

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 its homely cottage-smell,
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 hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!
What matters it? next year he will return,
And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days,
With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,
And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,
And scent of hay new-mown.

But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see!

See him come back, and cut a smoother reed, And blow a strain the world at last shall heed For Time, not Corydon, hath conquered thee.

Alack, for Corydon no rival now!

But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, Some good survivor with his flute would go, Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate,

And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,

And relax Pluto's brow,

And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair
Are flowers, first opened on Sicilian air,
And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.

O easy access to the hearer's grace

When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!

For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,

She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,

She knew each lily white which Enna yields,
Each rose with blushing face;

She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.
But ah! of our poor Thames she never heard!
Her foot the Cumnor cowslips never stirred!
And we should tease her with our plaint in vain.

Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be,
Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour

In the old haunt, and find our tree-topped hill!
Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
I know the wood which hides the daffodil,

I know the Fyfield tree,

I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;

I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?-
But many a dingle on the loved hillside,

With thorns once studded, old, white-blossomed

trees,

Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried,

High towered the spikes of purple orchises,

Hath since our day put by

The coronals of that forgotten time.

Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's

team,

And only in the hidden brookside gleam

Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door,
Above the locks, above the boating throng,

Unmoored our skiff, when, through the Wytham
flats,

Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among,
And darting swallows, and light water-gnats,

We tracked the shy Thames shore?

Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell
Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass? -
They all are gone, and thou art gone as well.

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

I see her veil draw soft across the day,

I feel her slowly chilling breath invade

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with

gray;

I feel her finger light

Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train ;

The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,

And hope, once crushed, less quick to spring again.