whole secret, he intended, he said, to leave their company, and give the world
an account of what he had learned.
The Scholar Gypsy
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes!1
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
5 Nor the cropped 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-blanched green,
io 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,2 And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
is 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 folded0 flocks is borne, penned upWith distant cries of reapers in the corn3?
20 All the live murmur of a summer's day.
Screened is this nook o'er the high, half-reaped 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
25 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;
30 And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.
Sheepfolds woven from sticks. 3. Grain or wheat. Pot or jug for carrying his drink.
.
THE SCHOLAR GYPSY / 1363
And near me on the grass lies Glanvill's book
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
Of pregnant parts4 and quick inventive brain,
35 Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gypsy lore,
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
40 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, long ago
Met him, and of his way of life inquired;
Whereat he answered, that the gypsy crew,
45 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 learned, will to the world impart;
50 But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' This said, he left them, and returned no more.?
