After a while I find a blank succeed: After a while she little has to say, I'm silent too, although I wish to stay; 225 Ah! but I ask, I do not doubt, too much; The naught-else-seeking, naught-essaying soul. 230 Hence are these fears and shiverings on the verge; By books, not nature, thus have we been schooled, Wiser tradition says, the affections' claim Will be supplied, the rest will be the same. 235 I think too much of love, 'tis true: I know It is not all, was ne'er intended so; Yet such a change, so entire, I feel, 'twould be, So potent, so omnipotent with me; My former self I never should recall,· 240 Indeed I think it must be all in all." "I thought that Love was winged; without a sound, His purple pinions bore him o'er the ground, Wafted without an effort here or there, He came and we too trod as if in air: 245 To upbear his lagging footsteps, lame and slow, 250 And ease him of his quiver and his bow?" 66 Erotion! I saw it in a book; Why did I notice it, why did I look? "He is not vain; if proud, he quells his pride, 255 260 And somehow really likes to be defied; Gives way at once, and leaves you to succeed." Easy it were with such a mind to play, And foolish not to do so, some would say; One almost smiles to look and see the way: But come what will, I will not play a part, Indeed, I dare not condescend to art." 66 Easy 'twere not, perhaps, with him to live; Seek me as I am, if seek you do at all.” Like him I do, and think of him I must; But more I dare not and I cannot trust. This more he brings say, is it more or less Me when he leaves and others when he sees, 265 270 275 280 One, who for me forgotten here has been; And he, the while is balancing between. If the heart spoke, the heart I knew were bound; 285 66 So quick to vary, so rejoiced to change, "Absence were hard; yet let the trial be; O should I lose! and yet to win I hope. 300 I win not now; his way if now I went, 66 'Gone, is it true? but oft he went before, And came again before a month was o'er. Gone — though I could not venture upon art, 305 He had such ready fancies in his head, And really was so easy to be led; One might have failed; and yet I feel 'twas pride, 310 Gone, is it true? but he again will come, Wandering he loves, and loves returning home." 315 320 From early morning to advancing dark, He toiled and labored as a merchant's clerk. Three years his heavy load he bore, nor quailed, Then all his health, though scarce his spirit, failed; Friends interposed, insisted it must be, 325 Enforced their help, and sent him to the sea. Alas! why quitted? Say that charms are, naught, 330 Is constancy a thing to throw away, 335 And loving faithfulness a chance of every day? Changed, or but truer seen, one sees in her Something to wake the soul, the interior sense to stir. 340 Alone they met, from alien eyes away, The high shore hid them in a tiny bay. They met, before they knew it, in their eyes. His latest theory with patience hear: A heart, the secrets of my heart to keep; To share my hopes, and in my griefs to grieve; 66 Yet in the eye of life's all-seeing sun MATTHEW ARNOLD. THE SCHOLAR-GIPSY. Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head; But when the fields are still, 5 And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, And only the white sheep are sometimes seen ΙΟ 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 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. Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field, Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And air-swept lindens yield 15 20 25 |