How
often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The
dust and din and steam of town:
He
brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
And
dusty purlieus of the law.
O
joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The
landscape winking thro’ the heat:
O
sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
The gust that round the garden flew,
And
tumbled half the mellowing pears!
O
bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear were fed
To hear him, as he lay and read
The
Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or
in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A
ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor
less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With
banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat
we glanced from theme to theme,
Discuss’d the books to love or hate,
Or touch’d the changes of the state,
Or
threaded some Socratic dream;
But
if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For ‘ground in yonder social mill
We
rub each other’s angles down,
‘And
merge’ he said ‘in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.’
We talk’d: the stream beneath us ran,
The
wine-flask lying couch’d in moss,
Or
cool’d within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
Before the crimson-circled star
Had
fall’n into her father’s grave,
And
brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And
buzzings of the honied hours.