And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak Down o'er his face, and såte by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-rear'd By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now 'mid their broken flights of steps Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. And night came down over the solemn waste, And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, And darken'd all; and a cold fog, with night, Crept from the Oxus. Soon a hum arose, As of a great assembly loosed, and fires Began to twinkle through the fog; for PHILOMELA HARK! ah, the nightingale The tawny-throated! Hark, from that moonlit cedar what a burst! What triumph! hark!—what pain! O wanderer from a Grecian shore, Say, will it never heal? Dost thou to-night behold, The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild? Dost thou again peruse With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? Dost thou once more assay Thy flight, and feel come over thee, With love and hate, triumph and agony, Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale? Listen, Eugenia How thick the bursts come crowding THE SCHOLAR-GIPSY 1853. Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill: Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another bead. But when the fields are still, And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, Of whoin each strives, nor knows for what he strives, And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope. Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we. Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too? Yes, we await it !-but it still delays. And how the dying spark of hope was fed, And how the breast was soothed, and how the head, And all his hourly varied anodynes. This for our wisest! and we others pine, And wish the long unhappy dream would end, And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear; With close-lipp'd patience for our only friend, Sad patience, too near neighbor to despair But none has hope like thine! Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, Roaming the country-side, a truant boy, Nursing thy project in unclouded joy, And every doubt long blown by time away. O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before the strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife Fly hence, our contact fear! Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away and keep thy solitude! Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silver'd branches of the glade Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue, On some mild pastoral slope Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales Freshen thy flowers as in former years With dew, or listen with enchanted And Hermod came down tow'rds them from the gate. And Lok, the father of the serpent, first Beheld him come, and to his neighbor spake : "See, here is Hermod, who comes single back From Hell; and shall I tell thee how he seems? Like as a farmer, who hath lost his dog, Some morn, at market, in a crowded town Through many streets the poor beast runs in vain, And follows this man after that, for hours; And, late at evening, spent and panting, falls Before a stranger's threshold, not his home, With flanks a-tremble, and his slender tongue |