MATTHEW ARNOLD
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:
The bloom is gone y and with the bloom go I.
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet- William with its homely cottage-smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow; Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, And the full moon, and the white evening-star.
He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown! What matters it" 1 next year he will return,
And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days, With whitening hedges, and uncrumplmg fern,
And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,
And scent of hay new-mown. But Thyrsis never more we swains shall sec'
See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,
And blow a strain the world at last shall heed For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee.
Alack, for Corydon no rival now'
But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,
Some good survivor with his flute would go, Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate,
And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,
And relax Pluto's brow,
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