But rumors hung about the countryside,
That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,
55 In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,
The same the gypsies wore.
Shepherds had met him on the Hurst5 in spring;
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frocked boors6
60 Had found him seated at their entering, But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And 1 myself seem half to know thy looks,
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks7
65 I ask if thou hast passed their quiet place;
Or in my boat I lie
Moored to the cool bank in the summer heats,
'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,
And watch the warm, green-muffled Cumner hills,
TO 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,8
4. Of rich conception, many ideas. 7. Crows. 5. A hill near Oxford. All the place-names in the 8. Or Bablock Hythe (a hitlie or hythe is a landing poem (except those in the final two stanzas) refer place on a river). 'The stripling Thames': the narto the countryside near Oxford. row upper reaches of the river before it broadens 6. Rustics. 'Ingle-bench': fireside bench. out to its full width.
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136 4 / MATTHEW ARNOLD
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt's rope chops round;9
And leaning backward in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Plucked 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-leafed, white anemone,
Dark bluebells drenched with dews of summer eves,
And purple orchises with spotted leaves?
But 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-winged swallows haunt the glittering Thames,
To bathe in the abandoned lasher1 pass,
Have often passed thee near
Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown;
Marked thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,
