Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps° come on, °62 Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell, 65 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. 70
He hearkens not! light comer,° he is flown! °71 What matters it? next year he will return, And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days. With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern, And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways, 75 And scent of hay new-mown. But Thyrsis never more we swains° shall see; °77 See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,° °78 And blow a strain the world at last shall heed°-- °79 For Time, not Corydon,° hath conquer'd thee! °80
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°; °84 And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,° °85 And relax Pluto's brow, And make leap up with joy the beauteous head Of Proserpine,° among whose crowned hair °88 Are flowers first open'd on Sicilian air, And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.° °90
O easy access to the hearer's grace When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine! For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,° °94 She knew each lily white which Enna yields, 95 Each rose with blushing face°; °96 She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.° °97 But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard! Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd; And we should tease her with our plaint in vain! 100
Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be, Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill! Who, if not I, for questing here hath power? I know the wood which hides the daffodil, 105 I know the Fyfield tree,° °106 I know what white, what purple fritillaries The grassy harvest of the river-fields, Above by Ensham,° down by Sandford,° yields, °109 And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries; 110
I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?-- But many a dingle on the loved hill-side, With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises, 115 Hath since our day put by The coronals of that forgotten time; Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team, And only in the hidden brookside gleam Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. 120