And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford’s tower:.
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, tir’d 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 inquir’d.
Whereat he answer’d, that the Gipsy crew,
His mates, had arts to rule as they desir’d
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 grey,
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 slow punt swings 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 anemone—
Dark bluebells drench’d 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-wing’d swallows haunt the glittering Thames,
To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass,
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.
At some lone homestead in the Cumner 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
For cresses from the rills,
Have known thee eying, 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.
In Autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood,
Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edg’d way
Pitch their smok’d tents, and every bush you see
With scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of grey,
Above the forest ground call’d Thessaly—
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.
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?
And thou hast climb’d the hill
And gain’d the white brow of the Cumner 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.
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:
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.
—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,
And numb the elastic powers.
Till having us’d our nerves with bliss and teen,
And tir’d upon a thousand schemes our wit,
To the just-pausing Genius we remit
Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been.
Thou hast not liv’d, why should’st 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,
And we ourselves shall go;
But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
