Canto LXXXVII

Witch-elms that counterchange the floor

      Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright:

      And thou, with all thy breadth and height

Of foliage, towering sycamore;

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 dusky 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 through 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.