At this point the poem gives us the students' account of their teacher's life. They are singing a song about it, and you must understand that all the lines in parentheses do not necessarily mean interruptions of the narrative, though some of them do. A little careful reading will make everything clear; then you will perceive how very fine the spirit of the whole thing is. Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should Spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo! the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! My dance is finished?" No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping, Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,-- Give!"--So he gowned him, Straight got by heart that book to its last page: Learned, we found him. When his first students met him, they met him as a youthful and a learned man; these latest students found him old, bald, scarcely able to see--and yet he had not allowed himself any rest. In spite of the fact that he felt death was coming, he continued to study day and night, he read all the books then existing, and when he had read them all, he said only, "Now I have got to the beginning of my real studies. The material is in my hands; now I shall use it." Sickness or health made no difference to him. This life he thought of only as the commencement of eternity. He said, "What's Time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever!" Back to his books then; deeper drooped his head: _Calculus_ racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: _Tussis_ attacked him. In vain did his friends and pupils beg him to take a little rest, but he never would; he said that he must learn everything he could before dying. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled _Hoti's_ business--let it be!-- Properly based _Oun_-- Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_, Dead from the waist down.