But what was before us we know not, And we know not what shall succeed. Haply, the river of Time-- As it grows, as the towns on its marge Fling their wavering lights On a wider, statelier stream-- May acquire, if not the calm Of its early mountainous shore, Yet a solemn peace of its own. And the width of the waters, the hush Of the gray expanse where he floats, Freshening its current, and spotted with foam As it draws to the ocean, may strike Peace to the soul of the man on its breast,-- As the pale waste widens around him, As the banks fade dimmer away, As the stars come out, and the night-wind Brings up the stream Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. ELEGIAC POEMS. _THE SCHOLAR-GYPSY._[17] 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 cropped grasses 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-blanched green, Come, shepherd, and again renew 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. Screened is this nook o’er the high, half-reaped field, And here till sundown, shepherd! will I be. Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep, And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see Pale blue 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 that Oxford scholar poor, Of shining parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tired of knocking at preferment’s door, One summer-morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the gypsy-lore, And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood, And came, as most men deemed, to little good, But came to Oxford and his friends no more.