1 The Haystack in the Floods "The Haystack in the Floods", is a narrative poem of 160 lines by William Morris, the

famous painter and decorater, first published in The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems in 1858. It is probably his best-known poem. It is a grimly realistic piece set in France during the Hundred Years' War. The doomed lovers Jehane and Robert de Morny flee with a small escort through a convincingly portrayed rain-swept countryside, to reach the safety of English-held Gascony. They are however intercepted by the treacherous Godmar and have a last despairing parting besides the "old soaked hay" of the title. The encounter takes place shortly after the Battle of Poitiers but the characters Godmar and Jehane are entirely fictional. Morris used the name of an English knight Sir Robert de Morny, who was born in Essex and fought at Poitiers but who did not die in the manner recited. Criticism The poem succeeds because of its narrative pace, rather than ostentatiously-crafted language. It was one of the poems from Morris' early romantic period which were brought to the fore by historian E. P. Thompson (himself a published poet) in his 1955 biography of Morris. Against a dreary background of leafless dripping trees, rain and mud, the focus is on the Frenchwoman Jehane, her physical and emotional exhaustion as she is faced with impossible choices, her sudden ferocity as she responds to threats of rape, and her "strangely childlike" manner as she makes a final decision that will mean immediate death for her lover and her own execution when returned to Paris. The Haystack in the Floods I went through a Victorian reading jag a short while ago. That doesn't mean I donned my frock coat and scarf and took to the streets reciting The Bab Ballads; but because of a recent self-medicating dose of Robert Browning's work, I found myself wondering what other writing was out there I had missed (or misunderstood) from that era. One such overlooked poet is William Morris. Morris was a painter and a Socialist as well. The Haystack in the Floods is a surprisingly 'modern' poem, one with an immediate impact that resonates in the mind (and gut) long after it has been read. Unlike Tennyson's idylls, beautifully written yet with their Spielbergized approximation of Arthurian times, Morris' view of the medieval goes beyond castles, heroic quests, and moats, delving into psychologically deeper recesses and addressing, to quote Hannah Arendt on Adolf Eichmann, the banality of evil. Set in 1356, after the defeat of the French at Poitiers by Edward the Black Prince, an English knight, Sir Robert de Marny is traveling through France with his mistress Jehane, heading for the English-controlled safety of Gascony when they are suddenly surrounded by French enemy, Godmar and his troops. The opening five lines of the poem establish a fatalistic tone: Had she come all the way for this, To part at last without a kiss? Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain That her own eyes might see him slain Beside the haystack in the floods? Morris' poetry sounds like pulp fiction, a hundred years ahead of its time. You can almost imagine a

2 narrator reading those same lines, with minor vernacular changes, in the opening minutes of a poverty row film noir Jehane the femme fatale, Robert the fall guy, and Godmar the heavy filmed in stark black and white. All the elements are there: passion, filth, rain, self-pity, existential angst and, of course, murder. The mood continues: Along the dripping leafless woods, The stirrup touching either shoe, She rode astride as troopers do; With kirtle kilted to her knee, To which the mud splash'd wretchedly; And the wet dripp'd from every tree Upon her head and heavy hair, And on her eyelids broad and fair; The tears and rain ran down her face. This is an incredibly vivid passage, rich with details: the wet, naked trees; muddy ground; Jehane's matted hair and face streaked with rain and tears. Morris writes with terrific restraint and simplicity, creating tension and dread even before Godmar has arrived on the scene. These are desperate people, not even bothering to put up false facades of hope or joviality. The landscape is dark, dreary, and wretched; they are driven by a basic instinct to survive, and little else. Robert is either headstrong, or stupid, or a fatal combination of both: By fits and starts they rode apace, And very often was his place Far off from her Answering to a murmuring from his men, Robert turn[s] back with promises (or is it sudden false bravado?) that they are close to safety at Gascony. Approaching the old soak'd hay of the title, that Judas Godmar appears, accompanied by thirty of his men. Robert tries to soothe fears among his own ranks by evoking the English victory at Poitiers, even though they are outnumbered nearly two-to-one. His troops are somber and silent, offering no resistance as Robert is pulled from his horse. Godmar speaks matter-of-factly when Jehane refuses to yield ... as [his] paramour: Jehane, on yonder hill there stands My castle, guarding well my lands: What hinders me from taking you, And doing that I list to do To your fair willful body, while Your knight lies dead? This necrophiliac scenario of rape and murder doesn't quiet Jehane. She threatens to kill Godmar while he sleeps, by strangling him or biting through his throat. Godmar explicates the French peoples' reaction to a

3 returning, treasonous Jehane: 'Jehane the brown! Jehane the brown! Give us Jehane to burn or drown!' Eh gag me Robert! sweet my friend, This were indeed a piteous end For those long fingers, and long feet, And long neck, and smooth shoulders sweet; An end that few men would forget That saw it So, an hour yet: Consider, Jehane, which to take Of life or death! Godmar's leering description of Jehanes long fingers, feet and neck, and smooth sweet shoulders is the speech of a sociopath and sadist. Jehane dismounts, totter[s] some yards and with her face/ Turn'd upward to the sky, falls into a dreamless sleep (or is it faints?). Awakening, she reiterates, in a strangely childlike fashion or state of shock that she will not go with Godmar. With a start he acts, and she observes The long bright blade without a flaw Glide out from Godmar's sheath, his hand In Robert's hair, she saw him bend Back Robert's head; she saw him send The thin steel down; the blow told well, Right backward the knight Robert fell, And moaned as dogs do, being half dead, Unwitting, as I deem: so then Godmar turn'd grinning to his men, Who ran, some five or six, and beat His head to pieces at their feet. This gruesome climax has been foretold from the beginning. Morris' language is vivid and kinetic the flawless long bright blade coming down to sever Robert's head; Robert moaning as dogs do, halfdead; Godmar's men rushing in to smash the head to pieces at their feet in a febrile frenzy. Jehane, hands cold, smiling ruefully and perhaps driven mad, is off to prison in Paris to be burned or drowned as a traitor. An incredibly nihilistic conclusion, the hopelessness of which is hammered home with the final two, perversely plainspoken lines: This was the parting that they had Beside the haystack in the floods. Morris casts a cold, clear eye on his characters. He eschews affection toward them, and is not afraid to see them as they are. Even if our sympathies go out instinctively toward Robert and Jehane, the ostensible victims in the poem, that feeling is artificially enhanced when compared to the cruelty and Darwinian

4 drive of Godmar. There are no larger-than-life heroes, no stereotyped villains here. There is no need to look for motivations, hows or whys; things just happen. Had she come all the way for this? The answer is yes, in Morris pitiless universe of cause and effect.

It is not necrophilia that Godmar suggests, but something even more horrifying: Jehane is nothing more than a body to him. To Godmar, Jehane is not an individual, not a peer, not a person--she's just an object for his satisfaction. If he can break her resistance, it makes rape all the sweeter. A true sociopath, Godmar delights in the pain of others and has no empathy or respect for anyone.

"The Scholar Gipsy" (1853) is a poem by Matthew Arnold, based on a 17th-century Oxford story found in Joseph Glanvill's The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661, etc.). It has often been called one of the best and most popular of Arnold's poems,[1] and is also familiar to music-lovers through Ralph Vaughan Williams' choral work An Oxford Elegy, which sets lines from this poem and from its companion-piece, "Thyrsis".[2] The original story Arnold prefaces the poem with an extract from Glanvill which tells the story of an impoverished Oxford student who left his studies to join a band of gipsies, and so ingratiated himself with them that they told him many of the secrets of their trade. After some time he was discovered and recognised by two of his former Oxford associates, who learned from him that the gipsies "had a traditional kind of learning among them, and could do wonders by the power of imagination, their fancy binding that of others." When he had learned everything that the gipsies could teach him, he said, he would leave them and give an account of these secrets to the world. In 1892 Marjorie Hope Nicolson identified the original of this mysterious figure as the Flemish alchemist Francis Mercury van Helmont.[3] Synopsis Arnold begins "The Scholar Gipsy" in pastoral mode, invoking a shepherd and describing the beauties of a rural scene, with Oxford in the distance. He then repeats the gist of Glanvill's story, but extends it with an account of rumours that the scholar gipsy was again seen from time to time around Oxford. Arnold imagines him as a shadowy figure who can even now be glimpsed in the Berkshire and Oxfordshire countryside, "waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall",[4] and claims to have once seen him himself. He entertains a doubt as to the scholar gypsy's still being alive after two centuries, but then shakes off the thought. He cannot have died: 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.[5] The scholar gipsy, having renounced such a life, is

5 Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings,[6] and is therefore not subject to ageing and death. Arnold describes this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims,[7] and implores the scholar gipsy to avoid all who suffer from it, in case he too should be infected and die. Arnold ends with an extended simile of a Tyrian merchant seaman who flees from the irruption of Greek competitors to seek a new world in Iberia. Writing and publication "The Scholar Gipsy" was written in 1853, probably immediately after "Sohrab and Rustum".[8] In an 1857 letter to his brother Tom, referring to their friendship with Theodore Walrond and the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, Arnold wrote that "The Scholar Gipsy" was "meant to fix the remembrance of those delightful wanderings of ours in the Cumner hills before they were quite effaced".[9] Arnold revisited these scenes many years later in his elegy for Arthur Hugh Clough, "Thyrsis", a companion-piece and, some would say,[10] a sequel to "The Scholar Gipsy". "The Scholar Gipsy", like "Requiescat" and "Sohrab and Rustum", first appeared in Arnold's Poems (1853), published by Longmans. During the 20th century it was many times published as a booklet, either by itself or with "Thyrsis".[11] It appears in The Oxford Book of English Verse and in some editions of Palgrave's Golden Treasury despite its being, at 250 lines, considerably longer than most of the poems in either anthology. Critical opinions Homer animates Shakespeare animates, in its poor way I think Sohrab and Rustum animates the "Gipsy Scholar" at best awakens a pleasing melancholy. But this is not what we want. The complaining millions of men Darken in labour and pain what they want is something to animate and ennoble them not merely to add zest to their melancholy or grace to their dreams. Matthew Arnold [12] We would ask Mr. Arnold to consider whether the acceptance this poem is sure to win, does not prove to him that it is better to forget all his poetic theories, ay, and Homer and Sophocles, Milton and Goethe too, and speak straight out of things which he has felt and tested on his own pulses. The North British Review [13] "The Scholar Gipsy" has sunk into the common consciousness; it is inseparable from Oxford; it is the poetry of Oxford made, in some sense, complete. John William Mackail [14] "The Scholar Gipsy" represents very closely the ghost of each one of us, the living ghost, made up of many recollections and some wishes and promises; the excellence of the study is in part due to the poet's refusal to tie his wanderer to any actual gipsy camp or any invention resembling a plot. Edmund Blunden [15]

6 What the poem actually offers is a charm of relaxation, a holiday from serious aims and exacting business. And what the Scholar-Gipsy really symbolizes is Victorian poetry, vehicle (so often) of explicit intellectual and moral intentions, but unable to be in essence anything but relaxed, relaxing and anodyne. The Poem The Scholar-Gipsy is a pastoral poem, in twenty-five ten-line stanzas, based on a legend recounted by Joseph Glanvill in The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661). Matthew Arnold supplies the essential elements of the legend in lines 31 through 56 of the poem. The poem opens on a pleasant August afternoon, with the poet-shepherd dismissing his companion shepherd to take care of his usual pastoral chores, bidding him to return at evening when the two will renew their quest. Meanwhile, the poet waits in a pleasant corner of a field filled with colorful... Introduction - The Scholar Gypsy The Leaves of the Tree (op. 96) is an ongoing series of pieces which, together, make an English pilgrimage in music. Each is an independent piece, but they can be heard together rather like chapters of a novel. The style is generally fairly romantic, as if the musical novel was a picaresque 19th century romance. That's just the way it's come out, but there is a continuing theme of the musical quest,inspired by Matthew Arnold's poemIn the poem (derived from a story in Joseph Glanvil's "The Vanity of Dogmatizing" of 1661) a scholar leaves the university to wander with the gypsies. In the original tale he learns their secret knowledge. In Arnold's poem he stands for someone who followed his vocation, however crazy it seems. There are complicated layers of nostalgia and regret in both "The Scholar Gypsy" and its sequel "Thyrsis", and, of course, Vaughan Williams' setting "An Oxford Elegy".

Each musical episode explores a different idea from English spiritual writing or art - and these notes will give an idea of the background, though you don't need to know it. The ideas are English, not purely Anglican. The variety is wonderful, and, especially in the 17th century, the general air of religious chaos in England has produced inspired thoughts from every part of the spiritual spectrum. Some of the background ideas are explained in "A Franciscan Composer." "The Leaves of the Tree" are the leaves of the Tree of Life which are "for the healing of the nations". This may be the object of the quest. The music is written for a quartet of flute, violin, cello and piano, and arranged for "virtual orchestra" for this MP3 version. Two pieces, "Gleaners at evening" and "The Vale of Simplicity", were first performed by the Denstone Ensemble at the Stafford Music Festival in May 2008.

The Scholar Gypsy "Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed,

7 Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won todayAh! do not we, wanderer! await it too?" There are obvious references to the Arnold poems in this. The first part is mournful, opening into a view of the tree on the distant hill which is an important symbol in Arnold's poem. The music becomes restless, then arrives at a curious scene which may be a nocturnal camp, with an air of strangeness about it. "That single elm-tree bright Against the west - I miss it! is it gone? We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead; While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. " Music 1 - The Scholar Gypsy Discuss on the elegiac quality of Arnolds poetry. / Write a note on the dominating note of melancholy in Arnolds poetry. / Discuss Arnolds criticism of life expounded in his poems. / Arnolds poems are always of regret, loss of faith, instability and nostalgia. Elucidate. In its ancient Greece elegy used to denote a kind of poetry dealing with the subject matter of change and loss. As a humanist Arnold was very much concerned about the gaining of supremacy of science, theology and natural philosophy over arts, poetry, and moral philosophy as academic subjects. This passionate sense of loss and the concern for rapid shifting in the taste of his people are strongly evident in the poems of Matthew Arnold. His best of poems comes when he is this brooding mood. As a poet Arnold provides a record of a sick society. In the Scholar Gypsy (1867) Arnolds attitude to the gypsy is closely analogous to that of an adult towards child. He appreciates even envies its innocence, but realizes that there is no return to such state is possible for himself. The child loses its innocence not by some act of sin or by a defect of intellect, but merely by gaining experience and developing into an adult. The realities of adult life turn out to be less agreeable.The gypsy, like a child, is the embodiment of a good lost, not of a good temporarily or culpably mislaid. When Arnold contrasts the gypsys serenity with the disquiets and perplexities of his own age, he is not satirizing the nineteenth century, or renouncing it, or criticizing it, or suggesting a remedy, he is rather, exploring its spiritual and emotional losses, and the stoic readjustment which this will entail for it: No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours! For what wears out of the life of mortal men? Tis that form change to change their bearing rolls; The poem starts with description of the lethargic setting of the Oxfordshire countryside. The setting prepares us of the... [continues]

Summary of "The Blessed Damozel"

8 Dante Gabriel Rossetti was only 18 when he wrote "The Blessed Damozel." Although Rossetti was still young, the images and themes in his poem have caught the attention of many critics throughout the years. "The Blessed Damozel" is a beautiful story of how two lovers are separated by the death of the Damozel and how she wishes to enter paradise, but only if she can do so in the company of her beloved. "The Blessed Damozel" is one of Rossetti's most famous poems and has been dissected and explicated many times by many different people. Even so, they all revolve around the same ideas and themes. The theme of Rossetti's poem is said to have been taken from Vita Nuova, separated lovers are to be rejoined in heaven, by Dante. Many people say his young vision of idealized love was very picturesque and that the heavens Rossetti so often painted and those which were in his poems were much like Dante. The heaven that Rossetti painted in "The Blessed Damozel" was warm with physical bodies and beautiful angels full of love. This kind of description of heaven was said to have been taken from Dante's ideas. Others said that Rossetti's heaven was described so in "The Blessed Damozel" because he was still young and immature about such matters. In other words, he had not yet seen the ugliness and despair that love can bring, which he experienced later in his life after the death of his true love Elizabeth Siddal. "The Blessed Damozel" is beautiful in that if flows so easily from one line to the next and it seems, although it is not very apparent, that Rossetti filled it with symbolism and references to his own personal feelings and future life. The first few stanzas tell of how the Damozel is in heaven overlooking earth and thinking of her lover. Rossetti writes in stanza three of how time to the Damozel seemed to last forever because she was without her love. "To one it is ten years of years..." There are a few stanzas in the poem where the narrative jumps to her lover. In stanza four, it is the lover on earth talking about his beloved. The next few stanzas describe heaven, where it lies, and other lovers reuniting around her as she sits and watches...alone. In stanzas ten and eleven, her earthbound lover describes the sound of her voice like a bird's song which tells the reader that not only is he thinking of her, but it hints he can hear her and feel her about him. Of course, she can not understand why she must be miserable in heaven when all others are with their loves, after all, "Are not two prayers a perfect strength?" (stanza 12). In stanza thirteen, she dreams of the day that they will be together and present themselves in the beauty and glory of God. It is also in this stanza that Rossetti lets the reader know that she has not yet entered heaven. She is at the outer gates of the kingdom of heaven. Through the second half of the poem, the Damozel refers to herself and her lover as "we two" and describes how they will be together again someday in heaven. The Damozel even says she will teach him the songs that she sings...and she dreams of them together. It is in the next stanza, (stanza 17), that the narrative changes again back to the lover. He says that she keeps on saying "we two" but when and will they ever really be together like they used to be. Rossetti is using the Damozel in these few stanzas to describe how the Damozel would want her ideal and perfect love to be, but could that really be with her in heaven and him on earth? The two worlds separating them doesn't keep them apart in thought, but it is not possible to be together. In stanza twenty-two, she once again says that she will want their love to be as it was on earth with the approval of Christ the Lord. Near the end of the poem, in the last couple of stanzas, the Damozel finally realizes that she can have none of this until the time comes. The Damozel suddenly becomes peaceful and lets the light take her in stanza twenty-three. It is there that the reader also realizes that she will enter heaven without her love. Her lover on earth, of course, knows this and it is there in the last stanza that "I saw her smile...I hear her tears." Apart, but together in hearts, the two are separated by two worlds so great that there is nothing that can be done but hope and pray. And that is why the Damozel "laid her face between her hands, And wept."

9 Dante Gabriel Rossetti used the ideas of Christian belief in order to write his poem. His poem explores if two lovers, or anyone will be reunited once again in heaven. In many ways this poem is both optimistic and idealistic. That is why so many people said Rossetti was immature on the subject of love when he wrote this. To read Rossetti's poetry starting with some of his earliest, "The Blessed Damozel", and ending with his later, "The Orchard Pit", it is apparent how his feelings and ideas changed. As many times as "The Blessed Damozel" has been read and explicated, it is no wonder it has been said that so many ideas lie in his famous piece, but who doesn't want to believe, like Rossetti did in his younger years that love, no matter what, would always live in the spirit of soul and memory. "The Blessed Damozel" is perhaps the best known poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which was first published in 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ. Rossetti subsequently revised the poem twice and republished it in 1856, 1870 and 1873. Rossetti also used the same title for one of his best known paintings.[1] The poem was partially inspired by Poe's "The Raven",[2] with its depiction of a lover grieving on Earth over the death of his loved one. Rossetti chose to represent the situation in reverse. The poem describes the damozel observing her lover from heaven, and her unfulfilled yearning for their reunion in heaven. The poem also was the inspiration of Claude Debussy's "La damoiselle lue" (1888), a cantata for two soloists, female choir, and orchestra. The first four stanzas of the poem are inscribed on the frame of the painting. The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven. Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn. Herseemed she scarce had been a day One of God's choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers; Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years. (To one, it is ten years of years. . . . Yet now, and in this place, Surely she leaned o'er meher hair Fell all about my face. . . . Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace.)[1]

10

The Blessed Damozel is the only one of Rossetti's paired pictures and poems in which the poem was completed first. Friends and patrons repeatedly urged Rossetti to illustrate his most famous poem,[3] and he finally accepted a commission from William Graham in February 1871. After the work was completed Graham requested a predella, the lower part of the painting on December 31, 1877. His total cost was 1157. Alexa Wilding modelled the damozel in Paradise, Wilfred John Hawtrey modelled the child angel, and the probable model for the lefthand angel was May Morris.

Six Rossetti paintings as hung in Leyland's drawing room, 1892. The Blessed Damozel hangs third from the left.[4] (Click on any painting for its article.) Frederick Richards Leyland commissioned eighteen paintings from Rossetti, not counting unfulfilled commissions. Soon after Leyland acquired his first Rossetti painting, he and Rossetti explored the idea of a Rossetti triptych, which was eventually formed with Mnemosyne, an 1879 replica of The Blessed Damozel painted by Rossetti himself, and Proserpine.[5] Three additional Rossetti painting were then hung in Leyland's drawing room, all of which Leyland called "stunners."[4] Music Several pieces of music were based on the poem, including those for orchestra by Granville Bantock (1891), Edgar Bainton (1907), Ernest Farrar (1907); for piano by Arnold Bax (1906); for string quartet by Benjamin Burrows (1927); and a 1928 choral by Julius Harrison. A 2007 modern popular song of the same name by Tangerine Dream appears on their album Madcap's Flaming Duty.

The Blessed Damozel By Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882

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THE blessed Damozel lean'd out From the gold bar of Heaven: Her blue grave eyes were deeper much Than a deep water, even. She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven. Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift On the neck meetly worn; And her hair, lying down her back, Was yellow like ripe corn. Herseem'd she scarce had been a day One of God's choristers; The wonder was not yet quite gone From that still look of hers; Albeit, to them she left, her day Had counted as ten years. (To one it is ten years of years: ...Yet now, here in this place, Surely she lean'd o'er me,--her hair Fell all about my face.... Nothing: the Autumn-fall of leaves. The whole year sets apace.) It was the terrace of God's house That she was standing on,-By God built over the sheer depth In which Space is begun; So high, that looking downward thence, She scarce could see the sun. It lies from Heaven across the flood Of ether, as a bridge. Beneath, the tides of day and night With flame and darkness ridge The void, as low as where this earth

12 Spins like a fretful midge. But in those tracts, with her, it was The peace of utter light And silence. For no breeze may stir Along the steady flight Of seraphim; no echo there, Beyond all depth or height. Heard hardly, some of her new friends, Playing at holy games, Spake gentle-mouth'd, among themselves, Their virginal chaste names; And the souls, mounting up to God, Went by her like thin flames. And still she bow'd herself, and stoop'd Into the vast waste calm; Till her bosom's pressure must have made The bar she lean'd on warm, And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm. From the fixt lull of Heaven, she saw Time, like a pulse, shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove, In that steep gulf, to pierce The swarm; and then she spoke, as when The stars sang in their spheres. 'I wish that he were come to me, For he will come,' she said. 'Have I not pray'd in solemn Heaven? On earth, has he not pray'd? Are not two prayers a perfect strength? And shall I feel afraid? 'When round his head the aureole clings, And he is clothed in white, I'll take his hand, and go with him To the deep wells of light, And we will step down as to a stream And bathe there in God's sight.

13 'We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps tremble continually With prayer sent up to God; And where each need, reveal'd, expects Its patient period. 'We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Sometimes is felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His name audibly. 'And I myself will teach to him,-I myself, lying so,-The songs I sing here; which his mouth Shall pause in, hush'd and slow, Finding some knowledge at each pause, And some new thing to know.' (Alas! to her wise simple mind These things were all but known Before: they trembled on her sense,-Her voice had caught their tone. Alas for lonely Heaven! Alas For life wrung out alone! Alas, and though the end were reach'd?... Was thy part understood Or borne in trust? And for her sake Shall this too be found good?-May the close lips that knew not prayer Praise ever, though they would?) 'We two,' she said, 'will seek the groves Where the lady Mary is, With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies:-Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys. 'Circle-wise sit they, with bound locks And bosoms covered;

14 Into the fine cloth, white like flame, Weaving the golden thread, To fashion the birth-robes for them Who are just born, being dead. 'He shall fear, haply, and be dumb. Then I will lay my cheek To his, and tell about our love, Not once abash'd or weak: And the dear Mother will approve My pride, and let me speak. 'Herself shall bring us, hand in hand, To Him round whom all souls Kneel--the unnumber'd solemn heads Bow'd with their aureoles: And Angels, meeting us, shall sing To their citherns and citoles. 'There will I ask of Christ the Lord Thus much for him and me:-To have more blessing than on earth In nowise; but to be As then we were,--being as then At peace. Yea, verily. 'Yea, verily; when he is come We will do thus and thus: Till this my vigil seem quite strange And almost fabulous; We two will live at once, one life; And peace shall be with us.' She gazed, and listen'd, and then said, Less sad of speech than mild,-'All this is when he comes.' She ceased: The light thrill'd past her, fill'd With Angels, in strong level lapse. Her eyes pray'd, and she smiled. (I saw her smile.) But soon their flight Was vague 'mid the poised spheres. And then she cast her arms along The golden barriers,

15 And laid her face between her hands, And wept. (I heard her tears.)

The Scholar-Gipsy By Matthew Arnold 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 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-blanch'd green. 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, And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, 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 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, And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see 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; And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers. 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, tired of knocking at preferment's door, One summer-morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore,

16 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 enquired; Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew, 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 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 punt's rope chops 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,

17 Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam, Or cross a stile into the public way. Oft thou hast given them store Of flowersthe frail-leaf'd, white anemony, 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 wast 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 eyeing, all an April-day, The springing pasture 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-edged way Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see With scarlet patches tagg'd and shreds of grey, Above the forest-ground called 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 tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge? And thou has 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.

18

But whatI 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 used our nerves with bliss and teen, And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit, To the just-pausing Genius we remit Our worn-out life, and arewhat we have been. Thou hast not lived, 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 And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page, Because thou hadstwhat we, alas! have not. For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without, Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; 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 whom 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

19 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 then we suffer! and amongst us one, Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne; And all his store of sad experience he Lays bare of wretched days; Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, 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 neighbour 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 this 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 ears, From the dark tingles, to the nightingales! But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! For strong the infection of our mental strife,

20 Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest; And we should win thee from thy own fair life, Like us distracted, and like us unblest. Soon, soon thy cheer would die, Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made; And then thy glad perennial youth would fade, Fade and grow old at last, and die like ours. Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, Descried at sunrise an emerging prow Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily, The fringes of a southward-facing brow Among the gan Isles; And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine And knew the intruders on his ancient home, The young light-hearted masters of the waves And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail; And day and night held on indignantly O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits; and unbent sails There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales.